


The Kids Aren't Alright

by bittermixin



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Blood, Domestic Disputes, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Mutual Pining, Nudity, Romance, Slow Burn, Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2020-11-01 22:29:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20528672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittermixin/pseuds/bittermixin
Summary: It's been six years since Gabriel Agreste passed away. With no akumas left in sight, Marinette Dupain-Cheng has retired her secret identity and pursued a career in fashion and textiles. Nino and Alya became a family at just 18, and live quietly and happily in careers they never intended to find. But Adrien Agreste is a nobody. He lives vicariously through his father's wealth, drags his feet through the town on the best of nights, and has broken too many hearts to keep track of.Disaster strikes. Desperate to nurse an old friend back to health, Marinette eats into her summer break and dips her toes back into the waters of Paris. A plane from London may be Adrien's chance to find a new purpose- or simply twist the knife.





	1. Domestic

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Ladybug fanfiction, and the first fanfiction I've ever published into a public space. Please be gentle.

Evening had drawn in heavy slumber across the Parisian sky, a summer-wise orange glow filling the quickly draining streets as shutters hit windows and signs changed to ‘Closed’. This was not to say the roads were entirely empty- they rarely were in the capital- but rush hour had sung its swan song, and most of those who remained were young spitfires looking to stir trouble in the wee hours of the following morning.

To Adrien Agreste, Fridays used to mean something. They were fencing lessons, the zip of metal, the smell of his FIE foil mask. Now they were another day on his calendar, and he wondered with a childlike astonishment how exactly the anticipation of a schedule had made his life feel more fulfilling. But of course, as with most of his thoughts, it only served as a gateway into a guilt and grief that churned his stomach acid. He rubbed his eyes, somehow turning them blearier with sleep, and folded his Ray-Bans into his coat pocket with a click.

It would be misleading to suggest that age had not been kind on him- rather, he had not been kind on himself. Age was little more than a catalyst. Nino Lahiffe opened a door to an Adrien whom he may have joked was 21 going on 40. Eugh- genuine leather in the jacket, but the smell of low-quality booze and cigarillos was like a bad pheromone. Smoking simply because your father had done it had to be one of the worst excuses he’d heard in his life, let alone insisting it did him more good than bad. But they were implanted into one another. Adrien had done the Lahiffe family a great deal of good- and it would take more than a few bad habits to erase it.

Though, he wasn’t quite sure that Alya felt the same.

“Dive bar. On _Rue Charlot_. Sugar in the cocktails, beautiful girls, and best of all, you don’t have to pay a penny. You and me, get your best coat, we’re going-” Adrien’s words trailed off with an urgency- an air of confidence that would be more befitting of James Bond- it’s a shame that the guy had opted out of a sharp suit and a shave and leaned into the mid-life crisis apparel. He was already jittery as he pulled back from the doorstep, rolling his shoulder as if to beckon the old friend.

Nino laughed dryly. “Funny. I have plans. _We_ have plans. Zoo. Sorbet. I got kind of a thing going-”

“-and you won’t miss a _beat_, Nino- come on, don’t tell me you’d rather sit around watchin’- fucking- Animal Planet, yeah? Eating ice cream and- and rattling toys, and soothing the big old whip scars your wife’s been giving you?”

“No, no, you’re right- I won’t tell you. I’ve told you plenty before,”

“One or two drinks, wet the whistle, _prendre un verre_, yeah? Don’t tell me you’ve gone _soft._”

“Goodnight-”

Adrien moved with an agility Nino hadn’t seen in a long, long time. It winded him a little as he moved to shut the door and suddenly felt a boot pry it open. Adrien’s face was half-covered, but even through it Nino could tell his face was creasing with a flash of anger and a well of sadness. Then it turned to desperation.

“Nino-” He whispered breathlessly. “Nino, come on, man- fuck, I need this. You know I need this. Even- even Alya would admit that _I_ need this-” He motions to his chest with one hand for emphasis. “- just- please, okay- forget it- we don’t go out. We don’t go to a bar. Just let me stay, and see Ines, and we can play a game, and it’ll just be better for me.”

Nino felt a welt the size of a coin form in his throat. He looked down to one side, then back, matching the boy’s gaze. The eyes were raw and bloodshot. Their lustre had gone. From here, he could see the light from inside his home catch on the small pale stubble that salted Adrien’s jaw and chin. His face wasn’t quite waxy, but there was an- uncanny gauntness to it, for a guy who tanned well in the warmer months. This was bad. This was really bad. 

“It’s Alya’s choice. This is her house, too. Get in, get some water. You look like shit.”

Adrien’s lips went tight as he nodded appreciatively and moved into the front hall. Within the hour he’d sunk four glasses. Nino silently wondered if drinking like a fish was an acquired skill, or if years of upper-class repression had simply gotten the better of his friend.

Gah, silence. Awkward tension. Thick enough to spread on a slice of toast. Beyond the schoolyard, they’d had little to talk about for a number of years. It was really kind of amazing how little they had in common.

“We walked past his fountain the other day. It was- uh- really nice. You’ve done a really good job maintaining it. Someone left flowers.” Nino was first to break it. His line of work certainly required a level of small talk, if only to urge his clients away from a panic attack.

Adrien lifted his eyes, and rubbed his jaw as a little note of shame panged through him. “That was me.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought- maybe- Natalie, could have.”

“Oh, no, she doesn’t visit.”

“Right, right… still, he- you know, he was really popular, I just thought-”

“Nah, it’s usually just-”

“- right.”

“Usually just me.”

The words ‘pulling teeth’ came to mind. Nino clicked his tongue. Adrien found his eyes unfocusing on a small child’s toy. Something plastic and colourful.

“Hey, I mean-” Nino shifted uncomfortably. “You could, like, move- you know- sell the house, get a place of your own. It might help.”

“Uh-huh, yeah, I mean-”

“I mean it might not, but… it might, you know.”

“It’s not really what he would have wanted.”

“And this is?”

The words stung Adrien a little more than he anticipated. His father was a very secretive man. A little cold, a little alien. In that regard, he fit the bill. He had secrets all of his own. Yet Gabriel’s eluded him still. Maybe that was it. Maybe his write of passage was to create a secret so incredibly well-hidden it would drive his child mad and alcoholic.

Child. Ha, it was a funny thought. Him, with a child. Could you imagine? He’d destroy that kid. Make a smart little sociopath out of them.

The door sounded. Adrien jumped out of his skin. Nino cooled him with a steady gesture and place his other hand against a mug of cocoa. 

Alya was full of giggles as she ushered Isla inside. “Brr, it’s chilly! I thought these were supposed to be the summer months?” A spot of laughter. She was rosy-cheeked, a little flustered, and their child was much the same. A delicate, rounded face with all the handsome spark of her father and the sweet wryness of her mother. She was dressed (almost) all by herself, in shiny-buttoned overalls and a woolly hat that disguised a head of curly brown hair.

Adrien’s stare pierced through Alya Lahiffe. He’d murder for a woman like her. Warm, homely, a real wife- someone he could love and cherish and bathe in the fine heated waters of his father’s inheritance. A woman with dimples in her cheeks and starlight in her eyes. Even now, the simple elegance with which she unfurled and hung her scarf dazzled him. The words ‘a sight for sore eyes’ felt made for her and her alone.

For her- for that kind of woman- he’d have changed religion. 

Then she met his gaze, and immediately- there was ice. The slow dripping resentment of her stare turned solid in the chill of her demeanor, and great stalactites, glaciers- formed around him, entombing him. A frozen cage.

She flashed Nino a deathly expression, and kneeled to address their young girl.

“Isla, baby- you go and get your pajamas on. Daddy and I are talking to our friend.”

Adrien watched as a crown of frizzy brown hair obediently bounced up and down with the rhythm of the staircase. The girl was ever shy.

The atmosphere of the room felt akin to a Mexican standoff. Nino, hand ever on his holster, cleared his throat and shot first.

“Uh, Alya, honey. Adrien was feeling a little lonely.”

But his wife was like a viper. She fired back without a moment’s hesitation. “And how the fuck is that our problem?”

Adrien went sheepish and reclined into the kitchen. He’d scarcely brought a knife to this gunfight.

“Baby, please-”

“Don’t ‘baby please’ me. We have spoken about this-”

“- and we never agreed. It always ends with you saying you don’t want to talk about it, and look- he’s turned up. So what do we do now? Alya, he’s harmless.”

“We don’t do anything. He leaves, now.”

“- Alya…” 

“_NOW!_” Her voice was a blunderbuss that filled the room with the smell of woodsmoke and sulfur. If looks could kill, Adrien would have been rotted down to the bone.

But something Adrien couldn’t have anticipated happened. Nino saw red as he bit back, equally serpentine, venom on his tongue. “You don’t just get to shut down a conversation, Alya! That’s _not_ how I want things to work in this house. We _talk._”

“There is nothing to talk about! How can you _defend_ him all the time, Nino? He’s a deadbeat! What, did you stop giving a shit about your _family_ in the two hours I was gone? Is he really that fucking persuasive?”

“Isla doesn’t even _remember-_”

“Yes she does, you lying son of a bitch. She remembers, don’t try to make him feel better, she remembers _exactly_ what happened- because every night when I tuck her away she always asks me to check behind the fucking curtains- like- like- a _lunatic_! Our daughter is scared to sleep in her own room!”

There was a kind of primal beauty in the way they yanked at one another’s throats like taffy pullers that unearthed something deep inside Adrien’s body. Something that he’d dropped beneath a stack of dog-eared memories and left to dry up. He’d always hated shouting. Always, always, always. He could see his father’s face now, eyes bulging like an animal’s, see the strained coolness of Natalie’s face behind Gabriel’s shoulder. Shirking off of basketball to get ice cream with Nino. Skipping piano to listen to Jagged Stone’s new album. He needed to get to a thousand hours. The best don’t cut corners, the best don’t skip lines, they work harder and harder and when they don’t think they can go any further they push themselves just that little inch more. No shirking, no skipping. No good, no good- deadbeat deadbeat DEADBEAT DEADBEAT-

His hands, which until now had felt the cool edge of the marble countertop- were suddenly gripping splintered pieces. As though he’d taken a sledgehammer to them. Gristle and decay had bonded to it on an atomic level, and he squeezed his fist to crush the small chalky shards into a dust. What was left of his Cataclysm. 

Having driven a wedge between a happy couple and burned a hole into their furniture, he decided he’d had his fill of homewrecking for the night and walked past them both, skirting through the gap in the front door, the crunch of gravel breaking the static in his brain. He hadn’t heard much past Ines’ name, and even now he just wanted to scrub the whole night out. He needed to think. He needed therapy. He needed a fucking drink.


	2. Snowball

Heathrow had never looked so grey. Marinette Dupain-Cheng felt hot and nauseous with anticipation, even in the ever-so-frugal comfort of her economy class airline seat. The noise and disturbance of the countless other passengers around her was drowned out by a vicious onslaught of intrusive thoughts- visions of mangled faces and threadbare limbs. In her youth, she’d browse weird gorey websites with her friend Alex- a macabre fascination that led nowhere dark, but sobered her to the fantasy of death. Now, it was a reality. Chloé Bourgeois- daughter of André Bourgeois, head editor of Le Monde, and founder of Queen B cosmetics- paralyzed from the waist down.

Naturally, it had made the newspaper’s front page thrice this week, updating the public on her condition, answering questions from concerned fans online. It was trending on Twitter, and even now Marinette found herself rolling her thumb along her smartphone’s screen to check the ‘_priepourchloébourgeois_’ tag for something, anything uplifting. Among the common prayers for good health and God’s mercy were smatterings of insults and throwaway jokes that turned her stomach. Had hating people suddenly become cool and hip since she left Paris? Or were people always like this, and she was always too tunnel-visioned on sweet breads and sweeter boys in all her bottle-necked teenage ignorance to realise it? Either way, if this was the way society was going, she wanted no part of it.

Fortune had seemed to favour the latter years of her life. In a manner of speaking, retiring the Ladybug Miraculous was the best decision the young woman could have made. The passion, cunning, and dexterity she’d fostered as protector of Paris came all too handy in soaring past her exams with flying colours, driving forth a snowball of successful venture after successful venture. With her confidence well-nourished, putting herself out into an online space felt far less a challenge, and just three years after leaving the earrings for good, she was offered a scholarship at UAL to further her education in textiles and fashion design.

That’s where Chloé Bourgeois came in. Something between the two had sort of clicked after Marinette found herself more and more in the limelight. Perhaps it had humbled Queen Bee into submission. Perhaps a relationship with Sabrina had softened that crusty old heart into a workable dough. Either way, a budding friendship eventually led to a collaborative project between the fashion and cosmetic world that blew their online virality sky-high.

But times change and so must Marinette. A teary goodbye, a smattering of gifts, and suddenly the pair found themselves in entirely different worlds. They spoke often over the phone, of course- the wonders of technology- but higher education combined with the administrative responsibilities of their businesses had left time for face-to-face visits a little sparse. That was where most of the guilt had stemmed from. Marinette wished she could have spent more time with her friend. She wished she could have found a little more purchase in her heart. Now, under the bleak white sky of a cloudless Paris, she thought only of misery and heartache. What would be lost in a world with a Chloé-shaped hole. Like a cigarette burn in a length of fine silk. Worry, worry, worry.

It was already late by the time she’d landed. Too late for a hospital visit- the girl would already be asleep. Marinette closed the lapels of a duffel coat, a credit to her acclimatizing to the cooler western temperament of the English midlands. Her hair almost seemed darker than usual as simmering moonlight bounced off of wet pavement and illuminated the underside of her pale, lightly freckled face. No longer feeling the constraints of a dashing heroic silhouette, the buns had long gone, and what she rocked now was a short cut with two braids that ran parallel with her ears.

She’d find the house within the hour. Taxis had either gotten much quicker since she last visited, or she’d lost the luxury of time flying by. The power washer she’d bought her father last Christmas had clearly seen considerable use. Each white brick was spotlessly clean, a sentiment to the immense pride her mother and father took in maintaining a healthy business.

But for now, the bakery would be closed. As long as their baby girl was here, the beautiful window patisseries- more akin to flowers than sweets- were sealed behind a sheet of corrugated metal. 

The door opened with the faint twinkle of an overhead bell. They were waiting for her- they’d received her text. As she met their gaze, she bit her lower lip in a vain attempt to disguise her grief, only to chew down harder as tears- like great glass slugs- trickled from the corners of her eyes and down her face. Queen B branded mascara mixed into the waterworks and dripped into the floorboards with a small thud. She threw herself towards them and wrapped firmly around the shape of her father, the smell of flour and warm incline of his chest a blessed relief from the madness and fear as she soaked his apron with pent-up tears and bleeding makeup. Her head throbbed, her throat heaved, and she soon felt the cooler, gentler touch of her mother join the hug. They looked sympathetic. They looked tired. But they looked like home. Among every awful, violent premonition she’d had about Chloé Bourgeois, a small glimmer of good eked through- she would never, ever again take those closest to her for granted. For fear she’d be flying out to Paris again to see them cold and bedridden. She held her family in her arms as though they’d never see her again, and she prayed for every child who had not the luxury to do the same.

Marinette breathed in the smell of her old room. It had since been transformed into a makeshift storage, but the boxes and shelves did little to mar the powerful sting of nostalgia as she settled into the crimped polka-dot bedsheets. She stood, moved to examine herself in the mirror of her writing desk. Puffy eyelids, two long dark stains splitting her face into thirds. The girl tutted, and drew the side of her hand up to wipe away the grief. God, her face had gone flushed.

But there was something she’d forgotten. Plastered to the space above her computer were a dozen or so pictures. Feeling as though she were moving through molasses, Marinette stood, rubbing her thumb against the inside of her hand, and reached out to unstick the blu-tack and pluck a magazine clipping into her palm. 

Adrien Agreste. She’d forgotten about him. It was almost a blessed relief- goodness knows he ate up enough of her time. She traced her finger along the outline of his portrait- could tell you in detail the way the bridge of his nose connected to his brow in a way that sent her spinning. Not because she still felt the same way, of course- besides, the Adrien pictured here was a child. A snapshot of her youth. No, she could do it because she’d made an art of it. But he wouldn’t be the last. She almost wanted to laugh as she imagined how Luka would feel if he saw all that adoration painted into the walls. He was jealous like that- in a kind of nasty way that she didn’t comment on for the sake of keeping herself sane.

Adrien wouldn’t have done that. Hm. She folded the picture- the boy in ¾ profile, under moonlight, a hooded jumper on his shoulders- and tucked it neatly into her duffel’s pocket. She wasn’t quite sure why. She wasn’t sure if she really wanted it, or she simply felt as though she should have taken it, but it was there now and there it would stay.

She should really give herself a break.

A shower and a sleep did wonders to the human body. By morning she found herself lacing up her boots with a new kind of vigour, now in complete acceptance that whatever state she found Chloe in, she’d have to face it. She’d simply have to. She kissed her mother’s cheek and wrapped a box of macarons exquisitely. Two years of working with lace and ribbon finally pay off. Over a chocolate croissant and a glass of orange juice, she drums her fingers against her cheek before breaking the comfortable silence of her family’s morning routine.

“You know Adrien Agreste?”

Sabine was rearranging a window display- finding the right balance between the warm pinks and violets and the cool turquoise of her patisserie’s icing. 

“Oh yes, yes- we saw him just the other week, didn’t we Tom?”

Marinette’s father looked up from the iPad, his eyes like that of a curious bear’s as he drew his gaze first to his wife, and then to his daughter, blinking twice as the information caught up with him. 

“Oh! Yes, yes we did. We wanted to say-

“- wanted to say hi-”

“- hi, or ask- yes, say hi- ask how he was doing.”

“But we didn’t want to disturb him.”

Marinette’s innocence was startling. She batted her eyes, and furrowed her brow ever so slightly. “Why?”

“Well, since his father passed, he’s been an awful recluse. We thought maybe you’d like to take him something? We’d have done it the other day, if it weren’t for you coming.”

Marinette chewed her lower lip in contemplation. That was true. Gabriel Agreste, dead at only 44 years old. If she weren’t tangling with a monumental grief of the present, she’d have looked back on those few days of aftermath with more than a little bitterness. She didn’t see Adrien much in person after then. They exchanged a few messages- he would leave polite, if not brief comments on her website and social media. But something within him was lost that day and never found, and it seemed as though every interaction since had been edged with an uncharacteristic coolness. At one point, she was actually stupid enough to believe that a confession would shake him out of it, but Alya had talked that out of her.

It was weird. She remembered being so utterly heartbroken, watching him move past the bakery without a light in his eyes. Now? It was just a kind of resounding pity. She felt it echo through the room and sour the cup of juice by her plate.

“What’s he been up to?” Marinette asked, a little hopefully.

“Oh, not much, honey. We think he’s mostly trying to figure it out for himself. Grief gets to people in- in different ways, you know. And when you have all that money to fall back on, I suppose… I suppose people like Adrien have to ask themselves if it’s worth it?” Sabine lay a hand against her daughter’s shoulder and rubbed the roundest spot with the flat of her thumb. “He’s young. He’ll be okay. But…” Her eyes lifted to meet her husband’s, and her eyebrows flickered in encouragement.

Tom leaned back into his seat. “Ah, well... it’s not like an old friend could do him any harm, right? You really should see him, sweetie. He was always fond of you. Bring him some all-butter croissants.” He smiled sympathetically, and the corners of his eyes creased. He had such a warmth to him.

Marinette nodded, a determined expression on her face. “Yeah! I mean, yeah… since I’m here. I probably won’t get another chance… but I’m here for a few days. Chloé is the priority- um, but I’ll get to it. Really, I promise.”

Tom and Sabine shared equal looks of worry and emotional fatigue. Did she know?

“Honey, you wanted to see her _today_?” Sabine spoke first.

Marinette retorted, “That was the idea.”

“It’s a Saturday, baby. She’s in intensive care. You’ll have to book in advance, and even then…”

Marinette’s heart skipped a beat. Fuck. She was an idiot. A _fucking moron._ She knew that. She knew she’d have to book. So why didn’t she? The anticipation had gotten to her, and now she found herself spent of her emotional energy. She had just hopped on a plane and expected to waltz into the right ward like some stupid kid. 

She licked her lips and drew her thumb across her mouth, nervous.

“So Monday at the soonest?”

Tom offered a sympathetic look and nodded.

Marinette sighed, a frustrated puff of air directed more at her own pathetic self-indulgent fantasy than anything else. She wasn’t a hero anymore. She didn’t just get to do whatever she wanted. She had to colour within the lines, fill forms, make space. It felt like there was a triangle that would persist indefinitely through her life- focused around the three necessities of self. Time, money, and energy. In her youth she had rolling fields of energy and all the time in the world, but no money. In the present, as a young adult, she had money, plenty of energy- but no time to enjoy it. And as the universe stretched on around her and she reached old age, she’d inevitably have all the money and time she needed, but no energy to fuel it. Humans were constantly starved of what they wanted, all throughout their lives. 

But Marinette wasn’t quite right. Though time, money, and energy were of equal importance, there was a thorn in her side. An anomaly that persisted outside of what she believed. There was no theory to explain Adrien Agreste. He lived life off a silver platter, had no discernible illness or disability that would have prevented his body from keeping spry, and all the hours in the day to do whatever he wished with it.

And yet, he had no purpose. No swelling crescendo of achievement beyond a few advertising campaigns people forgot. Marinette was the opal of the earth, the drops of platinum that wove themselves in success after success like a cocoon- and no doubt, when her education was over and she’d married the man of her dreams, it’d only be up from there. She’d flourish like a beautiful white butterfly, pure and simple.

That’s what real people do. Adrien clearly wasn’t a real person. Real people didn’t lie in the gutter like a waste of oxygen. Real people didn’t lay posthumous waste to their father’s legacy. Stinging in places he didn’t know he could sprain, Adrien smeared a gluey streak of blood from his nose to his chin, licked his lips, examined the tacky red stuff in the morning light. No one had noticed him lying there. No one wanted to. Still seeing stars and with a head like a grease trap, he stumbled out of one of many Parisian alleyways, rubbed sticky sleep from his eyes, and inched his way back home, ignoring the way the public seemed to gravitate away from the smell of old smoke and dry wines. That he couldn’t understand- as if they didn’t enjoy an after-dinner drink like the best of us. He only really understood their contempt of him when he became acutely aware of the piss and vomit whose scent persisted in his hair and clothes.

He wanted to cry. He did, really- he just couldn’t find the energy to. All he wanted was a long, hot bath, a smoke, and to order a beautiful woman. And perhaps a quart of whiskey. Okay, a half, but you’re pushing it, Agreste.

By the time he got home he’d convinced himself into pouring out a double. He noticed that his piss was slightly red- a sign of internal bleeding that would probably clear up in a day. That wasn’t the most shocking thing. It shocked him more that he didn’t even blink in response. Not even a pang of concern. He really had stopped giving a shit about himself.

Oh well, you’ve had a long one, buddy. Go get that double.


	3. Pocket

Adrien awoke the next morning with a blistering headache and a length of gauze sloppily wound about his forearm. His sinuses felt greasy and his stomach was somehow both incredibly heavy and incredibly empty all at once.

The sofa bed had one person in it. Him. This was good news. In a drunken stupor the idea of hiring a _fille de joie_ seemed the greatest breakthrough of any scientist or philosopher since Isaac Newton went outside on a particularly balmy day. Now, in the painfully stark and sober light of day, having to beg or bribe another lady of the night into anonymity would have really put a damper on the breakfast table.

Breakfast. It was an odd thought, but he missed pastry. The delicate, crispy curls of a hundred buttery layers as you sink your teeth into a caramel tart. The chewy folds of a fresh croissant. A regulated diet of mostly fruit and muesli had turned the odd sweet his classmates brought into a spectacle of the senses, a taste of normality. But grief and anxiety had left him a hermit, and nothing he could order online would ever kiss the breast of that old childlike wonder- the astonishing smell of a bakery on a Monday morning, just as everything is coming out of the oven, and the warmth and sweetness dance gently with the rhythm of your soul. They tap the tips of their toes in a delicate swing, and embrace you like a blanket.

But pleasant memories were interrupted by a stabbing pain around his left hip and he tightened up into a foetal position, rolling onto his stomach, creasing the silk pillows. His shoulder blades stuck sharp from his back, a credit to his brilliant new starvation diet which consisted almost entirely of ethanol and Marlboros. A bath had gratefully staved away the stench of defeat- the bile, the metallic twinge of blood- and as he combed his fingers through his hair he felt an unfamiliar softness. He’d had the back shorn quite close to the skin, but the top carried with it the tousled fringe of any Disney Channel heartthrob. In truth, he’d just wanted to be able to tuck a cigarette behind his ear without losing it.

Adrien rolled onto his back and placed a poorly bandaged hand across his stomach, breathing hard. Okay champ, you can do this, just pull yourself up. Grab a shirt. Soften up your lips with a little drink of water. He cleared away a shot glass with a cigarillo stubbed into it and thanked God that the maid didn’t take Sundays off.

Well, she didn’t take any days off, but that was beside the point.

As he brushed his teeth he examined the long, thin scar that ran from the nape of his neck across his collarbone. Nasty one- cat-themed akuma- told his father it was a fencing accident. Then the thicker, blotchier one beneath his ribs. A chef akumatized into using grease and oil as a weapon- and he was nicked by a splash. That was a tough one to talk his way out of, he had third-degree burns for a fortnight. He made something up about trying to cook for himself and not quite doing it right. At the time, it worked- but it also meant he couldn’t go into his own kitchen unsupervised for three months. And there he stood, grimacing at his own reflection, the knotted fingers tracing each glassy ridge he’d accumulated during his time as Cat Noir. In a way they were a reminder of his glory days, but in another they were a reminder of how often he’d made an embarrassment of himself in front of Ladybug.

Oh. There was a flutter there. It was the same, every morning. Something would remind him of her, and something would prick the softest muscle of his heart and let it bleed rosey thoughts of a girl who did a moonlight flit and left him scraping balconies twice a month, every month, since. As Adrien’s breathing turned ragged he sank deep into the familiar motions of a daydream. He thought how beautiful her skin must have looked beneath the suit- primed canvas, flawlessly smooth and elegant. Not a scratch on her. In his mind’s eye, Cat Noir’s wiry black fingertips touch the dimple of her back and feel the misty press of her lips beneath a wild Parisian starlight. And then- and only then, the rush of guilt and betrayal that affixed itself to every memory of her. Of Ladybug. 

A beat. Something begins to muddy her breast pocket. He watches as blood begins soaking through the fabric of her suit like an ink blot on a sheet of printer paper. She doesn’t stir, doesn’t gasp, scarcely blinks. The spread of it is slow at first, like a disease- and then she is almost overtaken as the darkness burns a hole through her. Adrien sees the viscera of her insides, black and sticky like burnt sugar, and she begins to speak, she asks why he left her alone. He rattles her and screams the same back in response. He can just about make out the whites of her eyes now. The world seems to move in slow motion, and he can just barely see the moment her eye dislodges from its socket before everything is clouded in a wonderful pearly light. She ruptures, scattering like a thousand winged insects, unfurling into hundreds of white butterflies that soar skyward amidst the echo of her dying breath.

And then his eyes open. This little routine. Not a day passed where he didn’t think fondly of her, but every road led to the same selfish bitterness that made him resent himself.

He freshened up and dressed himself in whatever was closest to the en-suite’s door. There was his old Letterman jacket- perhaps the sweetest thing Natalie ever bought him, despite the differences between American and French educational culture getting a little lost in translation. It’s not like he was much of a jock anyway. All but a fraction of the musculature he’d built up as an avid sportsman had been drowned out by spirits and takeaway food, and he had become dangerously underweight.

Directionless as ever, he stepped into the still air of the city and adjusted the sleeves of his coat with shaking fingers. He didn’t go out in daylight too often, but the fresh air would be good for the nausea. The intermittent pattern of the house’s iron-slat fencing turned the sun into a strobe light as he moved with little purpose down the winding side-path that would inevitably reward him with enough Vitamin D to convince himself he was healthy.

“Adrien?”

A flash of cold sweat blasted into the surface of his skin. Every sense flared and tensed- he could smell the grass from two blocks away, hear the song of a nightingale from the other side of Gabriel’s house. His irises shivered as he pulled through a mental record of female voices, praying to god it wasn’t one he’d had to pay.

“Oh god, I haven’t got it wrong, have I? That is you?”

He felt a feminine hand touch the wrinkles of his inner elbow’s sleeve, and fear choked the front of his throat as though he were about to cry. _Everything_ froze. Starlings hung like ornaments against the backdrop of a crystalline sky. What little resistance the air had put against him had died a death and there was only stillness all around. He turned his head, felt each bristle along his jaw prick the collar of his jacket.

Marinette’s features were beautifully soft and rounded. Her eyes poured forth a gasping blue warmth, like dipping into the smoky light of a dive bar. Adrien’s eyes continue to shake as he drew imaginary lines between the freckles, and silvery constellations filled a sky lit by sunbursts. The heat had done wonders to her complexion and brought a sweet pink colour to her nose, cheeks, and the tips of her ears. She looked like love.

The sight of her put a mist into his eyes and turned his mouth agape and he moved to pull his arms tight around her waist and deliver her a spinning embrace. She made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a squeal and then a stunned silence. Laughter split Adrien’s face and stretched muscles he didn’t know he still had, and she simply clung to his arms as he finished his small pirouette and eagerly rabbited her name, aghast to see a fragment of his youth preserved so tangibly in front of him.

“Marinette! Dupain-Cheng! Oh my god, it _must_ be- five, six years- Marinette, you look amazing!” 

She stepped back, eyes wide, still a little overwhelmed by the overzealous ‘hello’. Was she being heartless, or was he being overbearing? She’d been so begrudging about even bringing him these pastries that she hadn’t really stopped to consider her own feelings- what could bubble to the surface after having been separated from him for so long. He’d always seemed to keep her at arm’s length- she wasn’t exactly subtle about how attractive she’d found him, and he was a smart cookie. To see him so intoxicated by the sight of her was- was- it was odd, is all. Just a little odd. But the hug was nice and warm and soft and he looked clean and handsome in the slightly harsh yellow-white light of the 9 a.m sun. Very handsome, actually- but he had been a model, after all. The puppy fat had dropped off quick and what stood before her was a very sharp-looking Agreste. A roman nose and a head of windswept hair that reminded her of the thick, wavy style she so often saw on the beaches of Brighton. He was very English in a number of ways- his demeanor, his unnecessary apologies- a little accent training and he’d have fit right in. 

Though the loneliness bled through like a stuck pig. There was a real wear to his eyes, and thick, purpley creases underneath them marking many a sleepless night. He was a little scruffy, too, and the smell of damp off his clothes just barely worked through the hit of strawberry shampoo.

But he was lovely. He was, just, lovely. She’d spent too long staring, hadn’t she? She could see the corners of his mouth fall a little and an eyebrow furrow.

“Marinette? You okay?”

Ah, damn. She’d forgotten to say anything back. This was ridiculous. Six years, a chance to prove how much she’d changed and grown and refined herself- and she’s blowing it, and- and- words-

“Hi! Hi, hi- yes, it’s just- sooo, so… amazing, amazing to see you again, oh god, it really has been so long, hasn’t it just?”

As she smiles, her cheeks lift and crease into her eyes, the first genuine smile in a week, the first time she’s had to loosen that positive emotion. Did she really mean it? Was it really for him? Marinette chose not to ask those questions and instead tucked the box of croissants flat under her arm as she pulled the other around his back and pressed into the incline of his neck. He was still at least a head shorter, and she found herself on her tippy-toes. There was another worrying pause, and for a moment she fretted that she’d only worsened the situation, but then she felt him wordlessly loop his arms back around her waist and squeeze tight, and Adrien seemed to press his palm gently to her shoulder blade and splay it there. Feeling for something. A heartbeat, a pulse.

No, he thought. She wasn’t about to burn away. It was her. It was a real person.

“Come inside.” He insisted. “I can barely see you out here. It’s too bright!”


	4. Rose

“I visited her a week ago, as soon as I heard- she’s doing okay. Sabrina gets to stay past closing hours because, well- for her, the rules don’t really apply.”

Adrien’s teeth pulled at the crust of a freshly baked croissant and small shards tumbled into the plate below. As beautifully flaky and soft as he remembered. 

He swallowed before continuing.

“I might be able to buy you into the same privilege, but, ah- I don’t know, Marinette. I’m not as big a name as I used to be.”

Marinette snorted, felt a hot snap of embarrassment, and smoothly played it off with a decidedly girly laugh. 

“You never acted like a big name. That’s why I was friends with you.” She brought a thermos of chai tea to her lips and drank, soothed by the mild, unusual flavour. She was surprised by how little had changed since she last visited this place. Each piece interlocked perfectly with her old memories- the flawless white countertops and banquet table, the framed painting. There were one or two very slight differences, of course, but pound for pound she wouldn’t have guessed it was the squatting point of an eccentric hermit as her parents had so vividly described.

Her eyes drew to a point in the far wall, where a crater in the plaster the size of a spider’s web drew creases into the wallpaper, as though someone had fallen into it. 

Adrien caught her stare and put her mind at ease. “My fault. Was moving the- the coat rack, from the hall.” He punctuated the thought by pointing a line from the hole in the wall to the door into the foyer. “Must have- ah- fuckin’ slipped, or something- I’m getting a repairman... builder in. A carpenter will fix it.”

Oh... kay, suspiciously optimistic. She blinked at the sound of the word ‘fuck’. It just felt so thoroughly unfitting of an Agreste.

“It’s okay. So, ah- what sort of trouble have you been getting into?”

He seemed to tweak a lot. Marinette tried to maintain eye contact as his fingers pulled and picked at his lapels, and he seemed to place his feet almost on the seat of the kitchen chair as he rocked back and forth in a rhythmic, metronome-like motion. It reminded her of the first time ‘out’ with Chloe. The left-footed uncertainty of a dozen nervous adolescents bathing in the swelter of a disco. It was a school night, and she still had her bookbag tucked neatly behind her hip as she gawped into a mirror and peeled off a fake eyelash. She was seventeen, and Kim had offered to pay for the pair’s drinks that night. There was a kind of throb to the nightclub, a fizzy momentum that melted into the blue and red streamers of light and made it akin to the belly of a whale. Even now, Marinette could distinctly remember the faint click-clack of her heels as she went a little bow-legged and almost folded into the linoleum flooring. The lights stung but there was something hilarious about them, and Chloe had pulled her up off her knees and taken her out the back door for some fresh air. She supposed that had been her first time getting drunk- and it was good fun while it lasted. But Kim had trouble written through him like a stick of rock. He found them a few minutes later as they checked one another’s breath and produced a small square tin from the back pocket of his jeans. She’d never liked how leery he looked then- the muscles in his face were tight and the underside of it had gone dark with the hard orange glow of a streetlamp. _It was cocaine_, he said. _Did you want to try some? It picks you up. You girls look a little tired._ There was a small metal straw and a crumbly white powder that had collected at one end of the tin and suddenly she felt sick and afraid and she wanted to go home.

Marinette couldn’t quite remember what happened after that- but every time since Kim had been different. So irritable. Much more shouting. Chloe eventually stopped hanging out with him when he flipped and drove a golf club into the fender of his father’s new Audi. Marinette followed suit. She was so utterly unadjusted to that kind of lifestyle. It was something she had been led by the nose through, but even in the twilight of her teenage years Chloe had sense- a passionfruit cocktail was leaps and bounds better than 30mg of powdered brain damage, and any curiosity Marinette may have had when university reared its head was completely shattered when the blood vessels in Kim’s brain expanded and killed him in the August of 2023.

In a way she had felt responsible. Ladybug had felt responsible. If negative emotion had fostered a boy like Kim, one led down a path of bad company and destructive nihilism- why couldn’t she have been there to stop it? But she had always talked herself down from such a line of thinking. There were always going to be times where she wanted to save everyone. But if saving everyone only took a little bit of cunning, she was almost certain there would be enough cunning between every human on every square mile of earth to make sure nobody ever had to feel lost or afraid again. The logical deadpoint was that cunning alone simply didn’t cut it, and people like Kim, who had taken a young life and clipped its wings- were far beyond what she understood of people. People were so much more infinitely complex than she had given them credit for.

“Do you remember Kim?” She blurted, almost by accident.

Adrien had just begun delving into his portfolio of bogus enrichment exercises- charity, community support, etc- all things he could conveniently do from the comfort of his bedroom, when Marinette interrupted. That was unlike her. Perhaps it was an English thing.  
“Umm, yeah, I- I think so. _Lê Chiến Kim_?”

Marinette had brought her fingers to her lips as soon as she had spoken, but now rolled her first knuckle so the flat of her fist pressed thoughtfully against her jaw, and nodded.

“Ehh-” Adrien began, rubbing his palms against his thighs, a little strapped for conversation with regards to that old athlete. He still remembered the sprite of a guy with hair like a crème caramel and a megawatt smile. “I remember he- he was kind of mean to Ivan for a while- hah- that was kind of amazing to me. I still hadn’t figured out my rota and then there were these kids picking on each other for no reason.” He gave a reserved laugh and pulled his knees up to his chest, tucking his head to one side of them. “Okay, that does sound a little bit pretentious. I mean, I didn’t really ‘get’ bullying.”

Marinette shook her head in response and lied, “Nor me.” She understood bullying perfectly well. The way it could make someone feel. She just didn’t feel the need to argue with him.

“He died a few years ago.”

Adrien nodded, and plucked the straw of his iced coffee between his thumb and forefinger as he gulped. “Mhmm.”

The girl hugged herself and sighed. “I was just thinking- that was probably the last time we saw each other, you know?”

Adrien’s brows knitted together for a moment, then relaxed. Oh, he did remember. Natalie had escorted him there. It was the first time he’d gotten out of the house in months. Every funeral he’d seen on TV and in movies had sheets of rain, and he recalled being disappointed in how hot and dry the weather was. As though it wasn’t enough like ‘the real thing’. It was only when he saw Max gasp and puke as he attempted to deliver his eulogy that he realised how desperately stupid a thought that was. The picture of agony, a face streaked by mucus, sick, and tears that made the boy look as though he were melting.

He made a breathy sound, as though he’d tried to laugh but couldn’t quite do it. “You’re still not great at making small talk, you know.”

But she didn’t seem to have heard him. She was staring towards the display of fresh tulips he’d had prepared two days prior. Adrien liked having living things around- plants. They offset the lingering smell that death seemed to produce.

Marinette breathed through her nostrils and smiled. “I’m sorry, it’s just- being back in Paris, and this thing with Chloe- I mean god forbid, you know… it’s just- hard not to be kind of a downer about things.” Her hand moves to a loose piece of hair by her eye and tucks it behind her ear. “I really hope she’s okay. Like, obviously, I know she _looks_okay, thanks to you, but what’s going on in her head? She’s got such a- such a good mind, and being cooped up in bed all day, it’s- that’s not good for her.”

Adrien’s fingers flexed against the countertop. He wanted to reach out and touch her hand. She’d felt so delicate before. Was it entirely evil if he used this extremely tender moment as an opportunity to steal the smooth glance of a woman’s fingers? He quickly decided that it was more likely a win-win. He could feel comforting- he could be _actually_ comforting to her. Maybe she would be comforted by him. Just the thought alone made it seem worth a try. His brain whirrs as he pricks his fingers one by one from the stick of the polished marble and brings them to rest on the bridge of her knuckles. Her lips part ever so slightly in response, and she looks to him wide-eyed as his eyebrows fold back into a sympathetic expression.

“Hey-” He begins. Marinette’s head turns to her bag as a muffled ringtone rattles the air.

Her hands slide eagerly away and towards the clasp of her smartphone. It was Luka’s number, two affectionate blue heart emojis stuck before and after his name. 

“I’m sorry, I have to- take this-” She draws her thumb across the screen to answer as she stands, one beautifully fluid motion. Her back is turned now, and she instinctively cups a hand to her other ear and hunches her shoulders as she talks into the receiver.

Adrien reclines back, prodding his tongue into the inside of his cheek, more wounded than he’d like to admit. 

“Babyy, _hii-!_ What’s up?”

Luka’s face broke into a smile as he pressed the heels of his boots against the coffee table and plucked at the tuning keys of an old Vigier guitar, his phone pressed between his ear and shoulder.

“You haven’t been calling. You already skipping off with some actor boy up the Tower? Man, you could’ve given me some warning.” His words trailed off as his attention drew back to the tight spot around one tuner’s axis. Might need some oil for that.

“Oh no, no-!” She giggles and brushes another loose piece of hair away from her face. “Noo, I’m just- getting all those… old sights back, you know? It’s all so much the same. I wish you could’ve come with me.”

“Ah, me too, baby, me too- hey, you didn’t throw out my, uhh- my- it’s one of my picks, black with a kind of gold trim, you know… always fuckin’ around with my stuff, I just figured…”

Marinette could hear a faint rustling sound as he rooted about an old ashtray full of guitar picks. She absolutely had not touched any of them- she knew that for certain- but she didn’t really feel like being accused of it over and over again, so she lied and bit the bullet.

“Ah, maybe. Probably, baby. I’m so sorry, was it important?”

“Ehh, nahh, just glad you were honest about it. Not like you were with the JD pick- you remember that?”

How could she fucking forget? It was just a stupid little stocking filler he’d gotten a year into their relationship. A diamond-shaped pick with the Jack Daniels logo printed onto it. He lost it, that was just the fact of the matter, but he was completely convinced that she’d somehow cleared it up without noticing. He just would not let it go. Eventually she ‘admitted’ to vacuuming it up when he was out during a gig, and that seemed to satisfy him… but it also gave him an opportunity to berate her every time she made any mistake or lapse of judgement. As if he was perfect. As if he always pulled his weight in this relationship.

Still, he was her boyfriend, and that’s just the way things were.

“Aha, yeah, yeah… umm, how’s Amsterdam?”

“It’s cool. All that- shit people say, about weed, it’s totally true. You know, like, people are just out here smoking it with their coffee. It’s wild.” As he spoke he stuck a menthol filter in his lips for safekeeping and began rolling a cigarette, his voice a little more muffled. “It’s good money too. Man, I thought about living out here. Would you like that? Amsterdam?”

Another forced laugh. “Yeah, I mean- that’s like, a pretty huge conversation, isn’t it?”

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a- maybe. I’d have to look into it, and- emigrating is kind of a scary thing, Luka. I mean, not for you, so much- but-”

He sighed, frustrated. “No, no, it’s whatever. Jesus christ, calm down, I was just suggesting.”

Marinette paused and bit her lip. “Are you mad?”

A tut. “Of course I’m not mad, Mari. I just wish you’d be a little more positive about shit. Like, I have good ideas sometimes.”

“You sound kind of mad, baby.”

“Look- I- I’ll call you back, okay, I’ll call you later- I- shit, my tobacco’s fuckin’ falling everywhere- look, I’ll be in touch, alright? See you later, baby. Mwah.”

Click. Marinette’s irises quivered a little. She realised that she had been pinching her sleeve and stopped, bringing her finger to swipe away the record of the call and turn her phone off completely. A kind of melancholy edged with the bite of frustration turned her gills green and made her go red in the face, not out of total embarrassment, but as if the very blood in her body was screaming out. She let out a long sigh that puffed her cheeks, and turned to step with a new surge of confidence around the table and up to the hunched and slightly sheepish-looking silhouette of Adrien Agreste.

He looked up with dinner plates for eyes, as though expectedly. From his position he could see the small freckle on the underside of her jawline and the thickness of her eyelashes. He could make out through a flowing summer shirt the colour of lemon pulp the faint outline of her ribcage, and how it connected to the softer tissue of her breast. There was something alarmingly magnetic about her build. It was womanly, but there was a real musculature to her arms and legs- extracurricular activity had built her into a formidable shape. Adrien tasted rose water in the air around her.

“Everything alright? You can leave, if it’s- urgent.”

She breathed hard through her nostrils and thought. About love, and death, and friendship, and many other things she didn’t quite have the hang of. It would be nice to just fucking experience something for a change.

“Do you want to go to the park?”

Adrien blinked. “The park? The _Champ de Mars?_”

She nodded.

He blinked again. “Are you sure? There isn’t much to do.”

“That’s okay. I just want to kill time before our show.”

One green eye narrowed as the cogs slowly whirred inside his head.

“Our show? We have a show?”

Marinette rolled her eyes and made an exasperated noise. Like a whimper and a growl.

“I’m taking you to the movies. My treat. We’ll go to the park, we’ll get some ice cream, and then we’ll go see a movie. Go upstairs and shave.”

Adrien quite liked it when she told him what to do. He hoped it was more a personality defect than anything sexual and prised himself away from his seat, stretching with his whole body and popping several joints along his shoulders and back. 

“And what if I had plans?”

Marinette went hot with embarrassment. “You have plans?”

“No, I just wanted to see if you’d care.” He smiled sweetly and finished off the iced coffee, all the while watching the small bright spots in his lady’s eyes.

“Um, well- I don’t.”

“I don’t have plans and you don’t care if I do. I’m glad we agree.”

Adrien pulled his fingers through his hair to stave it away from his eyes, shook the lapels of his jacket, and breezed past his guest as the doorway into the main hall called for him. As he splayed a hand against the wall and began turning out of sight, he pointed accusingly towards her. “And you are not paying. It doesn’t make it less of a treat, I- I promise, there’s just, really no need for it, okay?”

He vanished as she called back, “Okay!”, and again rolled her eyes as her wanderlust took front force and she began tracing her fingers against the edge of the table, moving towards the large female portrait to the far end of the dining room.

It really was quite intimidating. Emerald had never looked so warm. The clasp of Emilie’s hands and the powerful notes of gold that surrounded her figure made her more fine jewellery than woman. Marinette had always wondered if it were a print, but as she touched a small corner she felt the texture of canvas beneath layers and layers of beautifully blended oil paint. There was something else, too- a glint to the alien flowers that adorned her braid. Silver and gold leaf, so flush with the paint itself it was almost indeterminable. Marinette wondered how long a painting of such scale and precision would take the average man. Three, four years? It drove her mad to imagine the energy, the blood, sweat, and tears, to produce something so material and fragile. One sniff of flame, one wayward match, and it would be gone forever. As a young woman in the 21st century, most everything was digitized. Thousands upon thousands of records at your fingertips. Some people had told her that the brush would become obsolete- that the storm of the information age would snuff out traditional art within 50 years or less. But standing here, now, in front of something so gorgeously tangible- she couldn’t imagine a world without canvas.

The sound of footfalls broke her train of thought. She turned to the face of a freshly shaven Agreste, the respectable sharpness of his jaw no longer offset by a scruffy blond stubble. She could tell he’d nicked himself with the razor once or twice, but it was such an improvement. It reminded her so much more of him when they were younger. She stepped twice towards Adrien, shoes clicking into tile, and stopped to fully admire the restrained smile on his face- as though he didn’t want to come across as desperate. She didn’t mind desperate just yet. 

“You look very handsome. Now let’s move! We’re burning daylight.”

His eyes twinkled, and his hands folded into the pockets of a newly acquired denim jacket. “Aye aye.” They moved almost in unison to the entrance, but Adrien stopped abruptly, catching himself on the doorframe and swinging on one heel as he pointed past her shoulder.

“Ah, damn- just grab my keys, actually, please-? They’re on the kitchen counter, you’ll- you’ll find them okay. Not that anyone’s robbing this place, but…” He stepped out into the quickly cooling Parisian air. The golden hour had brought with it a breeze from the west.

Marinette smiled big and strolled towards the kitchen, calling back, “I get it, I get it- don’t worry!” The kitchen was huge but its counter was relatively sparse. Barring a scattered stack of junk mail and a moulding bowl of fruit, the keys stuck out silver against the dark mahogany wood. As she scooped them up in one palm she stuck fast, thinking one had dropped off- but no, there was something else hidden beneath them. 

The ring was a perfect loop of silver, bereft of marks or signets, and fairly thick. Definitely built for a man’s hands- it would slip quite easily from her own. She plucked it from the counter and admired it in the soft glow of afternoon light that cut through the half-shuttered window. Beautiful. But strange as well. Marinette was naturally fascinated by jewelry and had made and sold countless pieces of her own design. It looked of pure silver, but it had no identifying brand or make. It couldn’t be an heirloom unless the crest had somehow worn away with time, but the precious metal looked new and untarnished.

Oh well. She set it down with a soft _tink_. She’d ask later- humour her own interests. Adrien actually seemed the type to care. Of course, that was in part because he didn’t have much of a life to his own- but still, he was hardly servile, and she could never scold someone for being ‘too’ compassionate. 

She locked up easy enough and tossed her old friend the keys. They glistened for a brief moment before slipping off the tip of his fingers and into the gravel.

“Dude! That throw was nothing!” She laughed and skittered past him, cupping her bag close to her underarm in an effort to glean a little more warmth. 

“I literally played basketball for like, three years of my life! I’m a- I’m, like, ‘_Catch Man_’ or something. I’m good at catching, is what I’m trying to say!” He laughed and pocketed them, half-jogging to keep up with her pace. “Are you sure you’ll be alright in that shirt? It’s supposed to be colder tonight. I have like, a dozen spare jackets.”

“I’m fine.” She dismissed, fetching a mint from her bag and idly sucking it as she furrowed her brow at all the small buildings and businesses that had cropped up in her absence from this old town.

But this block was Adrien’s home. He knew each spot, each window, each person- like the back of his hand. He filled her in on the finer details of the area’s development, cracked jokes at the expense of Thai food, and told winding stories explaining why the old woman who ran the Greek restaurant affectionately referred to him as ‘Basil’. There was mirth and splendor and the taste of a thermos full of lukewarm chai tea. Adrien and Marinette’s footfalls pattered in a distant rhythmic click down the asphalt of a freshly installed pathway- like the metronome of a sewing needle- and from it drew a golden thread of nostalgic wit that danced around the thick, foaming mist of tragedy, waltzed between old scars like the touch of a scalpel. And though every minute felt another needle in her heart, another prick of doubt and disillusion, Marinette would soon fall again for the blushing white smoulder of Paris.


	5. Milk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to thank everyone who's shown interest in the story so far for their support and encouragement. It's been kind of overwhelming! I've never really posted any of my writing in a public space like this. I won't make too many of these silly updates- I just want to say that I'm passionate about this piece, and even though I'm going to keep writing it no matter what, it helps to know that there are people who genuinely look forward to it.

The sweet elixir of night drew a spell across _la Ville Lumière_ like a quill across parchment, and from above the capital seemed akin to a forest fire. Great streaks of molten amber careening in a sulphurous web through the inky patchwork of rooftops. The water of the Seine caught the white and orange light and nebulized it, like liquid fireworks.

A coolness has swollen the air and turned it sharp. Marinette gasps through daggers of breeze, and as she speaks great billows of fog spindle and veil her face. She must have looked ridiculous, talking through mist, and pulled Adrien’s jacket tight around the whipping fabric of her frock for what little warmth it could provide. My, he was still a gentleman. As much as ever. Her voice was suddenly elated by a smile that flashed her laugh lines as she thought how smart he looked then, illuminated by a thousand distant lights.

“... and it’s no credit to, you know, the bad side of the industry. It’s all well and good that she had friends and… her family sort of inspired a lot of her music… but when you take away the drugs, and the alcohol- you know, the hallucinogenic ones, you’re- you’re only getting half the picture.”

Adrien, who had been holding a smile of his own since they left the theater, nodded in fervent agreement and talked with his hands as he organized his own thoughts. “Yeah, yeah, exactly-! Like, there’s a word for it. Flanderizing, right?”

“Flanderizing is more like… when you only leave a character with one trait, and it kind of- becomes everything about them. Like… mm… I can’t think of a good example, but I think you mean romanticizing.” 

“Ah, right- yeah, yeah- that sounds better. It’s too damn romanticized!” And he laughed. He had a much stronger laugh than she remembered- it felt more real. It came from the chest. It ran with his whole body. Adrien liked the way she could correct him without making him feel stupid. It was a welcome change.

“I mean, m-modelling looks so great on the surface.” He continued. “You show up, you get your photo taken, everybody loves you, right-”

“_Every_body?” Marinette interrupted, raising one eyebrow. A neat little trick. “Don’t flatter yourself. I knew pluh-_enty_ of people who thought you were this total airhead.”

“They’re yet to be proven wrong.” He paused for a moment as he rolled the mint she’d given him from one side of his mouth to the other. “Mm, so anyway- you show up, flash of lights, and you’re done, right?”

“Right?”

“Wrong! It’s exhausting. You wake up at stupid o’ clock because that’s just what someone else had arranged for you, you get to the spot, and then you spend two hours in the makeup chair getting your face powdered. And you _have_ to do just as they say, because if you mess up and they have to start again, it’s just more time.” She tugged at the sleeves of the Letterman jacket. They reached far past the tips of her fingers, and the much more slender girl had habitually began rolling them back towards her elbow. “You only get to eat what they provide, the directors are _impossible_ to work with, and some of my favourite pictures don’t even end up getting used. I just wish I could have… had something more to do with it, you know?”

Uncertain as to the best angle of response, Marinette stayed neutral. “No, I suppose I don’t. Getting used like some kind of… weird, posing puppet, it doesn’t sound good.” Her eyes glazed as she looked to the pavement. “But you know- you made a lot of people really happy, too. It was kind of inspiring. You were so young, but your face was everywhere!”

Adrien gave her a disconcerting look. “Would you have wanted your face everywhere when you were 14?”

Marinette’s lips went thin for a moment, and then she shook her head in response. “No. No, categorically no. Forget I said anything.”

The two went silent for a moment, then exchanged glances and burst back into stupid laughter. It may have been his imagination, but Adrien was sure she had been getting closer. A light shower had turned the brickwork beneath them glossy- but the boy hadn’t seen a drop of it. He could only feel the misty texture of the air on his now-bare arms. It must have come and gone during the movie.

They walked in peace for a few moments before the sound of river pulling against paddle echoed through the walls of the canal. A rowboat drifted against the still water of the Seine, breaking the mirrored surface with a few gentle ripples. Adrien stopped and watched the silhouette of a man warp the splendid streaks of light, turn them drunk with motion, and felt suddenly intoxicated. The steady rhythm of his lungs blew more plumes of white fog, like dragon’s breath, and Marinette steeled herself at his side, reached first to prick her fingers against his own- and then came to her senses and slid her arm beneath his, cradling it for warmth. From here, she could see his face in profile- the cut of his features, the toasty glow of his skin. There, in the quiet, earthy swell of the riverbank, she felt so human. And so like she had stepped within an oil painting.

He gasped softly at her touch- no sound, just the slightest wrinkle of his throat- and turned to face her. There was no theory to explain it- no great dawning pulse of realisation, no extraordinary crescendo of the perfect light and the perfect sound- to explain the fluttering rush that gave gooseflesh to the best parts of him. The pink flush of her ears had extended to the bridge of her nose, inked her freckles with the colour of a fine Rosé, and her eyes were a spritzer- they had bite and fire to them- a blistering shade of cerulean. Oh, if he could swim in them.

“Do you smoke?” 

He blinked twice, a little taken aback. Snapped out of some strange enchantment. “Whuh? Yeah, do you?” Adrien didn’t know what else to ask.

“No, I just- found these, in your pocket.” She presented a packet of Marlboro cigarettes, and her expression went from glamour to one of awkward epiphany. Her eyes flitted and her lip was bitten thin. She shook them a little for emphasis, and three loose smokes rattled pathetically in their cardboard sleeve. One had been turned upside down for good luck.

“Oh, ah- sorry. I don’t do it so much nowadays. Really! It’s an… expensive hobby.” Was that something people said? He wasn’t quite sure. He reached and snapped them from her hand, began moving them to the back pocket of his jeans. She looked to one side, and though the moment had clearly been lost, he felt such an urgency to impress her that he pulled the cigarettes back in front of her face, and spoke. “Really! Mari, I’m not a fuckin’- 40 a day guy, okay, I promise- I’ll- I’ll, look, I’ll throw these away now! I don’t need them!” And with a flourish he turned and pelted the carton towards the canal, where it uneventfully hit the water and rolled against its own current for a moment or two before filling and sinking. A few seconds burbled past before the few remaining cigarettes popped back up and floated against the dark and glassy surface of the Seine. 

He turned back to a thoroughly unimpressed expression. “Oh, so you smoke and you litter? Why have one bad habit when you can have two?” She tutted, wrapped his jacket taut against her frame, and resumed walking towards the stairwell at the edge of the canal. Adrien hung in space for a moment or two, completely gobsmacked, before putting on a jog to catch up with her.

It would take him all of the twenty-minute walk back to her parents' bakery for them to be back on laughing terms. She stifled a wayward snort in the striped wrist of his Letterman, let her eyes go shiny again at the sight of him. Yeah, she’s warmed back up, he thought, removing the jacket from her arms and laughing as she rolled her shoulder in faux-shyness, imitating something like Marilyn Monroe in a sleepy stupor. Her eyes were quite heavy-lidded, and for a moment he thought she may slump against him.

“I had fun. It was nice to see you. Even if you need to chill out sometimes.” Marinette pushed her knuckles playfully against his shoulder. “Hmn, I still don’t know about you paying for it all though. Just because you’re ‘Adrien Agreste’ doesn’t mean you-”

“- Marinette, it’s- fine, really. You’re not here often.”

“But it was my treat.”

“I say we call it a draw.” Adrien opened the door and rather dramatically motioned one arm towards it. “My lady.”

“My liege!” She retorted with a titter, hanging to the doorframe. Her eyes went a little vacant as she seemed to follow the distant throbbing light of the Tower. Adrien helped her back to reality with a quiet ‘goodnight’, and caught the sweet tang of her perfume in his throat as he pulled his jacket back over his shoulders. But what little warmth it provided paled in comparison to the ridge of starlight that danced in her eyes as they addressed him with pertinent scrutiny, as though half expecting him to stumble at the last hurdle. That confidence was so attractive. She grinned toothily- almost breaking into one last imprudent fit of giggles, but ultimately decided that the silence was worth it as the door shut with a soft and yielding sigh.

Marinette slid by her shoulder blades down the closed door, her hair pulling like sweet tendrils against the painted walnut as she sank into a heavy bliss. She switched the phone in her bag back to life with a little fumbling, and the dark hallway hummed with white, artificial light. She was thankful for the startup screen. It allowed her a few more seconds’ respite into the world of the living. She slid her finger into the geometric pattern of her passcode and watched as two dozen notifications blipped past.

Luka. ‘Where are u. X’ Seven missed calls. Fuck.

She worked her thumb and forefinger into her eyes, rubbing the weariness from them, decidedly not in any state to hold a cogent line of argument, but figured that the blasting she’d receive would be numbed by mental exhaustion.

“Honey, oh god honey, I-”

“Marinette? Marinette, are you alright?” He sat up from his seat on the couch, his face illuminated by the light of a paused television.

“- was just not paying attention, aw, god- I’m fine, I’m fine, my phone just died, and...”

“Fucking hell, Mari, just give me a heart attack, huh? I swear, the only thing you’re getting back from Amsterdam is a portable charger. _Shit_, man. I was calling and calling, like I said- I said I would, so we could talk, you know?”

“We can talk now?” Jetlag was getting the best of her. She sounded bleary. 

“Have you been drinking? You sound weird.”

“Noo, no, I haven’t- don’t- I-I’ve just- me and Adrien- you remember him, don’t you? Adrien Agreste?”

“Ohh shit, yeah, of course I- of course I do. Kinda tall, right? A little fat.”

Luka thought everyone was ‘a little fat’, so this was scarcely a description. He might as well have said ‘oh, the one with the skin?’.

“Uhmm, sort of, yeah- we- he, invited me to the movies, you know, and he seemed kind of lonely, so of course I- eh, it’s nothing- it’s not a big deal or anything, baby.”

At some point Luka had obviously resumed his game as the clacking of controller buttons filled the white noise of the speaker, but all noise stopped as the information caught up with him. He leaned back and inhaled through his nose.

“You were with him the whole night?”

“That’s- yeah, that’s, that’s the picture…”

A beat. “Okay, yeah- that’s, that’s okay. You gotta be kinda fuckin’ careful with that, uhh, sort of thing though, Marinette- like, don’t get me wrong, I love the guy, but you gotta admit he’s kind of leery.”

“Uhmm, he didn’t really- I don’t think he, seemed like it.”

Luka gave a frustrated sigh and audibly rolled his eyes. “Well- fuckin’, yeah, of course he didn’t ‘seem’ like it. Girls are just like, clueless with that shit, you know? But guys, we kind of- we’re on the same wavelength. Not as much bullshit. If I were there, then, boom- I just look- I just look at him once, and, shit, that’s him- out in the open.”

Marinette’s face darkened as he spoke, the smell of mint and Adrien’s cologne mixing into something almost savoury.

“You can just tell. You can just tell- what’s going on in their mind, you know?”

Adrien dusted down the sleeves of his coat, the flat of his palm working the sound of fabric down the empty streets. He swallowed, and teased the hair out of his face with the comb of his hand, and stood on the doorstep for a few seconds longer before uttering softly beneath his breath, “You can come out now.”

From the side street, the shadows seemed to pull like lengths of ribbon, puppeteered by some invisible force as they coalesced, solidified, went gooey and shiny like spun sugar. They took on a shape. The legs came first, gangly as they were, and shredded with thick clumps of fur. Next came the claws- five on each foot, hooked and gangrenous, snickering into the pavement like freshly minted coins and scraping thin, pale lines into the brick. What followed was something like a head- two great stalks that flattened into a sharp and formidable silhouette. Its ears prickled as they adjusted to the sound. The eyes were almond-shaped, a sickly shade of green, and flanked by long, stringy whiskers that seemed more like the feelers of an alien as they suspended themselves in mid-air. Last came the mouth- grossly disproportionate, stretching the features like a set of headgear, each tooth flashing in the moonlight. When the creature yawned, it exposed perhaps a dozen extra sets that ran parallel to the inside of its throat.

Its shape was an abyss. No light tickled the edges of its fur in the hopes of turning it full and glossy. The black beast lumbered towards its prey, stringy and limber in its stride, and spoke in explosions.

“It’s all so fun catching up with old friends, isn’t it? And so lucky to do it twice in one night.” A cackle. The smell of spoiled milk seemed to taint the breeze.

“I thought you might have died. I thought I could starve you out.”

“But I’m alive. Life is full of surprises.”

Adrien turned, and felt a defiance rise inside him- fuelled not by hopeless cowardice, but by love. He’d felt real compassion that night, and he brandished it like a saber.

“So what now? I still control you. I still own the ring. You can’t hurt me.”

Plagg’s eyes blinked in a peculiar way, one after the other, grotesque and insect-like. No response. Adrien took three steps towards it. 

“I bet you’d like to. I bet you’d fucking like it if you could hurt me. But you can’t. Those teeth are for show. You’re nothing to me.”

The cat admired its paws, idly drawing a slender pink tongue between its toes. “And what if I never leave?”

“Then I’ll die- somehow. And you become lost. And no one will remember you.”

Plagg hissed, drew to its full height, and bellowed through the street corners. “You have wasted _everything_ you’ve ever been given. You can’t keep me from the Ladybug Miraculous. It- does things to our bodies. Kwamis were born to _protect_ people, and _you-!!_” The beast drew one paw in a circular motion, as though prepared to lunge. “You have spent years protecting _nothing_ but yourself. You _stink_ of regret.”

Adrien stuck a palm to either side of his head and bent double, but the sound of Plagg’s voice pierced through like a naval alarm.

“You used to be just good for nothing, used to sit around rotting out your insides with human vices. But now, now-” The mouth unfurled, and a helter-skelter of teeth ran a path to a throbbing, fleshy gullet. Bottomless. “You’re not even trying to hide how selfish and pathetic you are.” The venom was flooding Adrien fast, filling his nerves with a deadly bite. “You’re the worst kind of parasite. You’re not _really_ depressed, are you? It’s just what you say to make people feel sorry for you. Well I’m _never_ buying it. It’ll _never_ be safe to think like that again-!”

And suddenly Plagg was screaming towards him. Adrien threw both arms up into a block as the black mass slammed through his bones, made him roll into the ground in a toxic agony. He writhed like a snake with no head, felt as though his ribs had opened and scraped the asphalt. He wanted to vomit or cry or both, and his night of comfort and splendor was punctuated by the ringing sensation in his ears. No, not just a sensation, a voice.

“I’m going back.” It whispered. “I can’t stand to look at you.”


	6. Puppy

Nino clipped the final button into place and sat in quiet admiration of his young daughter, his hands moving to straighten the hood of her windbreaker. A chill had found purchase in the air outside- for the first time in weeks- a peculiar meteorological phenomenon, but also an opportunity to hit up a Venti hot chocolate with Isla as the cooler months demanded.

Alya would be out all day. Sightings of a big cat by the _Maison de la Radio_ had journalists thick and thin pressing sole to pathway in an effort to net B-roll and eyewitness reports before the dark set in, and his wife was never one to miss out on a good scoop. He didn’t dote on it often, but the imbalance of their professions grew starker each day. Working for a news station fit Alya like a good pair of jeans- reporting came as natural as breathing. It was what she’d planned since they met and there she was, out there, doing it. But journalism is a nice local occupation. It doesn’t sling you far from home. It’s good money in a safe environment. When Nino impregnated her at 18, music fell from a passion to a hobby and has since kept declining from there. It’s the sort of thing that keeps you on the road, always moving, always grinding- not befitting of a father. Isla needed love and warmth and a good strong figure in her life, and he’d be damned if he was treading down the same road his old man paved. Some things are worth the sacrifice. He’d kill and burn and bury the last of his soul if it meant his little girl had someone reading her bedtime stories. Protecting her, guiding her, setting her up for the life she deserved.

Anyway, the big cat story was probably another fine piece of bullshit some spinster had knocked up to keep people on their toes. People thought that with the threat of the akumas gone, no one in Paris would be afraid again- he even believed it himself at the time- but the feeling didn’t last. Every little disaster needed full media coverage, it needed blood and death threats and hashtags; it was almost as if people wanted something to be scared of. Alya had told him that being afraid meant you could enjoy the good times more, but that had never made sense to him- weren’t the good times good enough? Did every seal pup need a beheading issued next to it just in case people got a little too content? It was madness. Pure madness. He couldn’t fathom madness. Thinking like that made his brain feel like two magnets opposed to one another.

But then again, it wasn’t his job to fathom madness. It was his job to get this girl a warm, sweet drink and something to eat. Money was tight, but he was sure he and Alya could survive without their usual glass of Friday night wine. Moderation had never felt so good.

He watched her waddle down the front steps in absolute adoration, zipped a leather jacket to his throat, and eased her down the particularly bumpy spot as her face became shrouded in an excitable white fog. It was colder out than he thought. Nino had almost been tempted to enjoy a tot of that whiskey he’d been keeping since last Christmas, but liquor was a whole other ballgame in this household. Alya hated the smell of it. He thought, perhaps, it reminded her too much of Adrien. He recalled the night of his stag do, the smooth whistle of a Bailey’s, and winced as memories of that long, sexless week ahead of it crept into picture.

The Starbucks was a relatively new addition, but a welcome one. It made Nino feel a little important, standing there, with his daughter’s hand in his own- like it was the most normal thing in the world. This was fine. He was an adult. Hah, take that, underlings. He made a whole person in just nine months. And all around him, posh women spoke sour-faced beneath their breath as if it were an achievement. Fatherhood had really given him a distinct kind of purpose- every day he could roll through the motions of it, and every day it got a little bit more rewarding. If he could only chart each dimpled smile, each new tooth, each small prize Isla had delivered to him, the swell of his humbled soul would move mountains.

“Adrien?”

The boy stuck out like a sore thumb. Nino recognised that old Letterman jacket from a mile away- as did everyone at school the first day the idiot waltzed in like hot shit on a box of dynamite. It was cultural braindeath like that which made Nino, at the time, feel somewhat of a martyr for having befriended him.

Adrien turned, a little dip of panic turning his face screwy before it flashed back to relief. “Nino. Hey, man- what’re you doing here?”

A little spell of mirth crossed the other boy’s expression. “Uhh, what do _you_ do when you come to a coffee shop? Apart from scaring off the waitresses?” That might have been a little too mean? Can’t tell for sure, gauge reaction.

“Haha, alright, alright, hey- hey-!” His eyes magnetised to Isla, who had gone a little shy and hidden behind the impenetrable wall of her father’s leg. “If it isn’t my favourite little lady in the whole world! Been a rare minute since you saw your uncle, right?” He kneeled to address her, brimming with peaceful sobriety. On any other occasion Nino would have kept her within arm’s length, but there was a real comfort to Adrien- a new ridge in his eye. He hadn’t seen it in a long, long time, and his heart softened as he too kneeled to address his daughter and shot her a glancing reassurance. A wordless face that said ‘it’s okay, he’s all better now’.

She pulled the tips of her fingers from her lips, swinging in a gentle rhythm as though rocking herself calm. And then she extended both arms towards the other man, pudgy hands squeezing the air, and stepped forward until she fell into his careful embrace. He smelled a little weird and he was much colder than daddy but he held her just the same. Isla made a small burbling sound and whispered some indiscernible chatter into the sleeve of Adrien’s jacket.

Nino’s got a good kid, he thought, ruffling the curly mop of brown hair that seemed to occupy a third of her body weight. With last night’s encounter still shooting a little pain through his ribs with every breath, his thoughts drift to Cat Noir. It was times like these, when he could feel the beating, innocent heart through the pulse of her neck and smell the blood in her face, that reminded him why it had all been worth it. No matter what he’s told now- no matter how bad it has, is, or will ever be, the time he spent under the rule of the Cat Miraculous had ensured a safer future for people like Isla. People like Nino. Even people like Alya.

People like Marinette. Ah, that’s what he needed to talk about.

“I know I do this a lot, but here’s the thing…” Adrien began, pulling away from her embrace. Nino knew from the tone that this was addressed to him, even if he wasn’t being looked in the eye. “Let me buy you lunch. Don’t worry about the cost. We can stay here, or… go somewhere else, whatever. I- I don’t need money; god knows, I don’t need money. I _just_ need some advice.”

Time passed. Isla had reduced her shortbread to a pile of cakey rubble. Nino looked pensive as he drank from a reusable cup, his focus waning away the sweet melodic flavour of his latte.

“They’re saying it’ll take a night to process with the bank, but- ahh, I don’t know, Nino. Like am I going about this all wrong? I feel like now, if I- tell her, about it, she’ll freak out and think I’m obsessed or something!” Adrien pulled his hands down his face, flashing the veins of his eyes and stretching his mouth into a long frown. He was speaking with a quiet urgency.

“Mm, mm, yeah- not to sound like a real a-hole or anything, but you… you do sound just a little obsessed.”

“I’m _helping_ her, Nino, it’s- it’s- it’s practically charity work.”

“Be honest, though- would you have done it if Marinette _hadn’t_ been in town?”

Adrien had no answer to that. He groaned and angrily spooned two sugars into his espresso. “No, no, but does that really make it a bad thing?”

“_Ehhh_? Kind of? It’s like, okay- think of- okay, think of it like this, right-” Nino cleared his throat and smoothed his hands against the table. “It’s like you’re on the edge of a cliff, and there’s this puppy, and you’re thinking, okay- this is bad, I can see it’s bad, but this puppy is like really dangling kind of out of the way. You’re gonna have to stick your neck out bad, and it’s not like it’s _your_ puppy or anything-”

“Puppy!” Isla chirped, her mouth peppered with small crumbs.

“That’s right, sweetheart, a woof-woof. Anyway, anyway, you’re looking at this-”

“Woof woof!”

“- puppy, that’s right, honey, settle down- you’re looking at it, and you decide it’s not worth risking your own life for one puppy. And _then_-” Nino’s middle and index fingers, which thus far had been not all too helpful in painting this weird backwards analogy, now began to mimic a walking set of legs as he continued. “This beautiful girl shows up. She’s strutting, she’s- she’s obviously hot for you, right-”

“You think she’s hot for me?” Adrien’s eyes lit up. 

“Yes, well- no, I mean… you make it _sound_ an awful lot like it, but I wasn’t there. Also, boyfriend, but whatever-” He waves a hand. “Can I finish my stupid little puppet show? Girl shows up, you suddenly think, well well well, how can I impress this… this, dream girl, who, can I just add-” Nino pointed an accusatory finger. “- _just so happens_ to have lived in _the same town_ as you. Isn’t that kind of remarkable? That the one woman you feel any connection to beyond night fever is from Paris, and not, say, Greenland?”

“Get on with it, jesus christ. No wonder you gave up the songwriting.”

“You suddenly think-” Nino emphasises, a little louder. “Suddenly it’s worth being generous, because hey, maybe she’ll drop her higher education, and her business, and her incredibly successful other half, because I’m so special and great- and we can spend all day eating- eating all-butter croissants in the sunrise in our great big inheritance jacuzzi.” A little exasperated and short on breath, Nino exhales, and drinks up. “I’m not saying you’re a bad person for donating to the hospital. That is just something that can’t be bad. I just don’t want you to lie to yourself.”

Adrien had been biting his lip for some time, brow furrowed as he looked with an unfocused stare at the salt shaker. “You’re right. I know you’re right, I’m just… working myself down into it.”

“Ah, I like that line. I use it a lot. You’d be a great husband.”

“No I wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not you. That’s your job. It’s your job to have a family, and it’s my job to… to, find a job, that I can do. It’s the circle of life, or… something.”

Nino narrowed one eye. “I don’t have ‘being a dad’ on lock-down. I think if that were the case it would be a sad, slow death for everyone else.” Another sip. “Who knows, maybe a kid would shake a little responsibility into you.”

Adrien gave Nino a look of disbelief. Nino thought for a moment or two, and then conceded.

“Okay, yeah, point made. Ignore that. Do _not_ put a baby in someone. Not yet. I might have a heart attack. I’m getting old, man.”

“You’re not the only one.” He was looking back to Isla. “I swear she was half the size last time I saw her.”

A beat passed. There was a real tangible silence between them. He’d brought it up. Nino swallowed hard, felt his adam’s apple quiver. Were they doing this?

“You... wanna talk about that…?” He began, easing into conversation.

Adrien fumbled with his butterknife. His mouth had gone dry. “Yeah, sure. We can try it.”

A squirming sensation filled their ribs- in the cold light of day, there was nowhere to run. It was a weight that hung about their necks for months, and for the life of him Nino couldn’t think how or why the deadbeat in front of him had found the stomach to say it.

“You’re lucky Alya didn’t go through with the police report. Man, I- I talked her out of it. It took days but I talked her down. I said some pretty… some pretty bad stuff about you.” It seemed almost comical to have his daughter by him given the point at hand. When he’d pictured this conversation before, in merciful sleep, he’d imagined screams and streaks of tears. He’d thought of needles and the smell of rubbing alcohol. “I know you don’t do any of the hard stuff, anything harder than the drink, you know, but- she thinks you do. And that’s on me. And I’m really sorry, man.”

Adrien went stone cold. “It’s okay.”

Take a deep breath. “What happened, man? What the hell were you doing?”

In truth, Adrien had only heard the story in snippets- second-hand reports from the people who never forgot to the man who never remembered. He could only assume he’d been looking for her.

Ladybug was his muse and his stimuli. She had suspended between the gentle recesses of a feral brain, played sweet agony with whatever of his subconscious had been left unscathed. He’d found- in the years that followed his abandonment of the Cat Miraculous- a certain effect on his senses. They were sharper, painfully so- he could smell a headache at thirty paces, and his eyes were second to none. The world bloomed with noise and light, every second, of every day; he could see through his own eyelids as he slept. 

They had kissed once. It was raining. The smell of it was distinct. But it would take a hurricane to drown out the gentle notes of mint and perfume that filled his throat and made him dizzy. Even now, he could recall the roll of her hips that loosed the air from his lungs- or perhaps, touch and prick the soft and yielding weight of her inner thigh. The heat and moisture was extraordinary, and when he had eased back for breath he could taste the sweet whisper of strawberry that her lip gloss yearned to scream, see then how her eyelashes fluttered in gentle unison with her breath and made their blue stand ever more piercing in the moonlight chambré. The string of saliva that trailed from either bottom lip, as though tantamount to a fine thread of silk. The world fell flat and grey around them, piece by piece, brick by brick, every building broke away and was swallowed by an immense and powerful disease, until all that remained was the way a piece of her hair tickled his throat and the sweet gasp of her breath, passion eternal- she breathed as though she couldn’t wait to taste him again.

And then she was gone. And not a day passed where he didn’t think of her. At one point he began keeping track- he had a map of Paris and he charted every rooftop, every balcony, every alleyway, searching for a sign of her. He never did.

Adrien breathed, long and hard, the thought rinsing his brain out cold as he tapped the edge of his cup with a spoon.

“Okay.” He said. “I’ll tell you.”


	7. Filter

There was a visceral asperity to the smell of disinfectant. It stung the senses like a fluorescent light and drilled a migraine into the back of Marinette’s brain as she sat in her small wooden chair in a small white hospital room and admired the beautiful tapestry of a woman who lay still-breathing before her. Chloé was a tough nut to crack, a mythic bitch, and Death itself was apparently no better. 

Her hair had undergone several thrilling transitions through the years- and Marinette knew each one like her own child. The midnight black of sweet ‘22, the infamous electric orange that only appeared for a fortnight, their prom night’s ‘moonlit’ silver. Strawberry lemonade was and had been the theme for about three months, but in the wake of her injury Chloe’s naturally brown roots were working a third tone into her palette. It had been furiously combed and bundled around her shoulders- or at least, one side had. The other had been shaved clean to the skin, and a charcoaled groove marked where the stitching had sealed her head back together. The wound ran parallel to the curve of her jawline, stopping at about her earlobe. Marinette’s eyes flickered between it and the many smaller cuts around the flesh of Chloe’s face, neck, and bare arms, and the fleeting thought that it had been a mother of sorts to those much lesser wounds dampened the reflexive growth of panic and existentialism that seemed to have bubbled into her throat. 

Marinette couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen Chloé without makeup. The summer months were dwindling but the sun had said its peace, and many freckles seasoned her lightly flushed cheeks. She was startlingly pale, even more so under the oppressive lights of the ward, and even her lips seemed to tremble as she fought through the throes of agony and anaesthetic alike.

“It was negligence. Some ancient fuck in his 80s who hadn’t even worn his glasses. I’m going to sue the shit out of him.” She grit her teeth and pulled one stringy limb from underneath her sheet, cupping Marinette’s knuckles in her palm. She levelled her gaze and repeated, more firmly this time. “I’m going to sue the shit out of him. I’m going to take his plastic hip and recycle that shit into a blush palette.”

Marinette snorted and cackled as her friend fell into a fit of raspy laughter. It felt good to laugh. Crying had bunged up her sinuses and turned her eyes a little raw. Laughing felt like a gulp of fresh air. 

She dabbed melting mascara from her cheek and gently soothed her thumb against the slightly thin, slightly macabre, but thoroughly alive hand of her best friend and hiccuped through the waterworks.

Chloé Bourgeois was more than a business partner. When rubber broke and a small bump in her stomach left Alya debilitated and strapped for time- that was when Chloé had stepped into the mix. They had grown friendly to one another before then, of course, but Marinette had never realised how much they had in common until the last two years of their education. At the time, she had thought that the excitement- the new experiences- were her little fix of what it meant to be Ladybug, but in all honesty, Ladybug had never been as rewarding as it was made out to be. She had frequent panic attacks, was cripplingly skeptical of any new friends, and the mounting pressure of her studies was affecting her performance. She found herself caring less. She grew selfish- and of course, adolescence took its toll. But the less said about that the better. It was a weird, confusing, and frankly embarrassing point in her life in which the cosmic irrelevance of her hormones was somehow comparable to the doubtless hundreds of innocent civilian lives she protected.

No, she wasn’t going to think about that. Maybe later, much later, when the threat of her friend collapsing into rubble wasn’t quite so immediate. Maybe somewhere quiet and lonely where she could wallow. Or maybe Adrien would understand? 

“It was a broadside collision.” Chloé continued, a little short on breath. They’d been bawling before Marinette had even stuck the petunias in the vase. “The beemer could have fucking wrapped twice around the dopey little car he was driving. It was weird- at first you don’t feel it at all. It’s like you- oh god, I don’t want to sound dramatic- but the moment after it all happens and you already feel like you’ve- died, you know-” This was what Marinette hadn’t been looking forward to. It had mostly been incomprehensible tears and how the family were doing thus far. Now, they were getting into the meat of it. The accident itself. “- it was peaceful. And then I was soo fucking angry. I started screaming at him before I even, like- realised I couldn’t move.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Maybe. There were a lot of voices before I blacked out, obv-obviously.” She stammered as her throat began to dry. “I just can’t believe I’m going to be walking with a cane _before_ that old piece of shit.”

“You’re not going to have a cane, Chloé. They don’t do fashionable canes. You’d- you’d have to start another brand.” Her words trailed into another fit of laughter that creased their eyes into thin arrowslits. What they were saying was, in the grand scheme of things, not amazingly funny. But high tension and stupid in-jokes had rendered the air both frightening and hilarious. This was good. They were having fun, still. At least that mind was intact.

Once they’d sobered down from that euphoric high, Marinette couldn’t help but go cold as Chloé’s expression went from a wheezing, full-throated heave of laughter to one of blooming acceptance. A sad glimmer. Bewildered, she anticipated the worst.

“You’re joking.”

Chloé shook her head and screwed her eyes tight as fresh tears sprouted and her chin whimpered. 

“I’m so sorry. I thought I’d told you. I- my head, is just, it’s all messed up. I really thought I’d told you.” She choked softly. “It’s- my leg- I… it might- oh god, don’t cry, don’t cry- my leg, it might be coming off…”

The IV wobbled as Chloé slowly drew the bedsheet away. Her right leg had been dyed the colour of ink- from thigh to ankle, it was annihilated. The deep purple tone sweltered under the artificial light and looked almost like a bad fruit, and Marinette’s eyes were wide and wet with a membrane of tears that had yet to be spilled. She had been told. She had been told only two days ago. It suddenly dawned on the girl that she simply hadn’t believed it. It was jetlag, or psychosis, or some combination of the two, and she had dismissed news of an amputation along with every other terrible circumstance her mind had cooked up. Dentures, wheelchairs, skin grafts- losing a leg had fallen into her hypothetical. 

“It _might_, okay? I don’t want you to freak out. It’s ok, I’m- I’m okay with it.”

“Whu- wh, what…?” Her voice was small and weak. “You’re fucking with me, Chlo. You are _fucking_ with me.”

It was panic now. As raw and shameless as a wild animal. A dark metal bracer pinned together the bone in Chloé’s leg. Something yellow with the consistency of toothpaste that she couldn’t place but could feel the powerful rotten odor of was cemented just below the kneecap. Fat, pus, or marrow? It was the worst kind of puzzle. Marinette felt as though a spade had been taken to her sternum. Her migraine was getting stronger now. She could feel it there, just in her temple, a cold fissure. She needed air. It was so fucking hot in here. It was choking her. She was hungry. No, she was dying. She wanted to rip the silly plastic tubes out of the broken thing in front of her and pull her friend away from it all. Where the fuck was her friend? Chloé wasn’t crippled. She was too perfect for that.

A cool touch- the quiet pressing of her friend’s pinky finger. She was so angry, so incredibly ill, so bent out of shape. It felt like a truck had rolled over her.

The curtain flitted and the shadow of a woman cast its spell into the carpeted floor. The undulating throb of sadness Marinette felt swallow up her brain turned stony as she saw Sabrina for the first time in three years. There was such anguish. It could strip the enamel off your teeth at fifty paces. Her hair was black and choppy, and hung in thick square clumps across a face seared with grief. She looked as though she’d cried for weeks and aged ten years. 

Marinette pulled her cardigan back on and folded her arms tightly as she stormed out of the ward. She knew it was wrong. She knew what she was doing, right here, in this moment in time, was thoroughly and utterly out of order. It was arguably the worst thing she had ever done. But there was nothing to explain it. No rhyme or reason, no vivid excuse- no plea for madness. It just brought too many bad memories back. She had never felt so selfish. Marinette panted for breath, halfway down the street now, still moving- still bleeding tears- still contorted with a kind of out-of-body self-awareness that told her oh yeah, there’s a moment of your life in which you walk out of a soon-to-be-amputee's hospital ward because your precious little feelings got hurt and oh yeah, her grieving girlfriend watched you do it and oh yeah, it’s happening right now. Of all the self-serving, parasitic, lousy fucker behaviour. Marinette couldn’t understand herself. She couldn’t even try. A few hours ago she’d have killed to see her friend and hold her hand and let her know she wasn’t alone, and now she couldn’t stand the sight of her. It became catastrophically evident that Marinette wasn’t equipped to deal with failure. She couldn’t accept a world in which the people she loved got hurt and there was nothing she could do about it. She felt so stupid- what the fuck did she expect? A bruise? A slap on the wrist? It was a car accident. Popped tyres and screeching metal. She had imagined plenty of awful things, but- she’d never really thought they’d be real. How _very_ fucking naive. 

But that was all in Marinette’s mind. It was what she had convinced herself off, and thus was distinctly different from what we call the truth. The truth was that Marinette didn’t really love being a designer, an artist, a fashion icon. She loved being Ladybug. And she knew this because she wanted to be famous for her art. She wanted people to see her designs and flock to her, smother her- stoke her flame. But passion is not born from demand. It comes from a simple human pleasure. Marinette knew in her heart of hearts that if she really loved fashion she would have no concern about being famous. But she did, and so, by that logic, the best thing about being Ladybug was the anonymity of it. Ladybug was like a second skin, and a gate into another world where all that mattered was the blistering passion for life and air and sound and light. And now she was gone forever. And all that was left was the shell. The glasses. The pieces of herself that Marinette invented to fill the burning hole where a Parisian sky once fit. To be able to do and say what one pleases. To steal a kiss and think not of what it meant. To breathe only sky and walk its scrapers. Turning in the Miraculous was Marinette’s way of beating herself to a bloody pulp. She had carved out the only parts of her that made sense and filled it with stupid men who didn’t really care and enough responsibility to distract her from what she really wanted all along. She forced herself to be as unremarkable as possible. And in that there is richness and great beauty. It was the absolute sincerity of her human purpose. Because of- and in spite of- the terrible, no-good meaninglessness of her life, she forged her own purpose, and in the process had already destroyed herself. Because in all truth (or at least, the only truth a mind that young could conceive) nothing would ever feel as good as the mask and the Lycra.

Away from the deeper machinations of her mind, the girl really needed to feel something other than sorry. But she couldn’t see her parents- not like this, not in this state- she couldn’t inflict that on them. She needed someone who didn’t give a shit how selfish and pathetic she was. The kind of person who couldn’t possibly make her feel any worse, even if they tried. She was slipping over the edge- her grief, her love, her anger, all her thousands upon thousands of emotions were tearing at her insides like fishhooks. Marinette was breaking away fast. Another piece had just pulled away. She wasn’t even in her own body anymore. She could see the bounce of her hair and the fear in her stride. As she approached the house of Adrien Agreste, she smelled pennies and realised that her nose had started bleeding. When would she feel as though her life wasn’t just chewing out the motions of what she and every other braindead idiot on the planet _thought_ was success? She didn’t know for certain. She couldn’t begin to attempt to venture for some great cataclysmic truth that was buried in some distant and well-hidden corner of her noggin. But it wasn’t the first time she’d felt like this. It had just been a really, really long time.

Back in the hospital, Sabrina set a cup of coffee down by the side table and pulled the tips of her fingers through her eyes to rub the exhaustion out of them, almost dislodging her contacts in the process. Chloé stared into empty space for a moment, her mouth agape, and then to her girlfriend. Waiting. Waiting for the right combination of words that would bring her back to the world of the living.

“She just needs time.” Sabrina quietly concluded. Eugh, filter coffee. Too gritty. “Adrien was just the same. She’ll come back tomorrow once she’s… figured it all out.”

“I just thought she might have been… like, different, about it, you know?” It was clear that neither of them were especially good at this. They were acting out the motions of having just been stiffed at a hospital bed. “Marinette is soo good with this sort of stuff."

Sabrina shrugged and shook her head a little. “She’s kind of too precious for this sort of thing. I don’t think she even knows how the bones, like…” Sabrina fanned out her fingers and poked them at one another. “Work… you know?”

Chloé nodded but didn’t really agree. She rolled her neck to face the ceiling again. No leg, huh? Well, on the bright side, there was no better time in history to lose it. Prosthetics had gotten insanely tactile and responsive. And as far as her business went… well, it’s not like she did most of the dirty work. She just came up with a plan and let a load of little people who never went to university sort out the number-crunching and the chemistry and whatnot.

Of course, she was humouring herself. Being humble, in her own kind of twisted way. Queen B cosmetics was by no means to be the same without her incredible influence. Chloé was by no means an expert in business economics or stirring syrup, but her passion and leadership was like an aura. It was one of the reasons Sabrina fell in love with her. Or, so she said.

She reclined as much as her body would allow into the comfort of her memory-foam pillow and appreciated the smell of coffee- even if the stuff was cheap and nasty, it was still leagues more pleasant than the weird tang of disinfectant.

“Sabrina?”

“Hm? Honey?”

“I love you.”

Chloé couldn’t quite turn her head, but she could hear the smile in that voice.

“Well, I love you too. Very much. And you’re going to be just fine. As a matter of fact, um…” Sabrina squirmed a little. “Better, now- even.”

Chloé sniffled and turned her attention fully, quirking a brow.

Sabrina continued. “Someone already paid for a custom prosthetic.”

“_What?_” Chloé shot up- or at least attempted to. The bed creaked beneath her weight as she stuck her neck up. “What- wh- why? _Why_ would someone do that?”

“It was anonymous, but I managed to work it out of the hospital staff. It was pretty obvious. But I don’t know if you’ll- eh, honey, I don’t know. I don’t think you’ll like it.”

Chloé’s eyes flickered back and forth, shaken by both the immense generosity and the furious confusion of it all. Sabrina was deadly serious.

“That’s like, thousands and thousands of euros. That’s like, thirty- thirty, or forty thousand euros. What are you even talking about? Are you serious?”

Sabrina bit her lip and nodded. “That’s not the only thing, though- I was doing my research, and- prosthetics don’t last super long. Like, there are exceptions, sure- but… three, five years, at a push. Before you get it replaced, that is.”

Chloé’s eyes darkened. “_How_ much? How much did they pay?”

“It’s… it’s six figures. I don’t want to tell you any more.”

Her immediate reaction was of absolute incredulity. Then, the ridiculous laughter. I mean, you had to laugh. Hundreds of thousands of euros. And for what? Her? The beauty guru? Her heart pounded in her ears. And then she realised what was going on. And it only tickled her more. She laughed and it was absolutely dry.

“That piece of shit.” She said aloud, the roughness of her throat coming into full clarity. “I am going to shove my new thousand euro leg _up_ his _ass._”


	8. Albatross

_I’m going back. I can’t stand to look at you._

Adrien awoke with a start and felt a familiar clenching pain somewhere in his abdomen, and within the few gasping, bleary moments of half-sleep he arched his back diagonally and spewed a liquid diet into the fine, if not slightly industrial carpeting he’d maintained for at least 18 years. There were still toxins in his system. Sweet venom that needed purging. His body knew it but his mind had convinced his self that he deserved it. So was his stupid privileged struggle.

He yearned to simply sink back into his bed and swallow away the burning sensation at the pit of his throat, but dehydration took its toll and he found himself unable to get back to sleep. It was only around 1 in the morning, so he didn’t feel as though it would be wholly detrimental to grab a whiskey sour and ease his brain back to a respite.

Mercifully, he had prepared a few earlier. He just had to make his way from his room, through the main hall, and into the refrigerator. A challenge in itself.

Every shadow flickered and throbbed like a heart with a hole in it. Adrien pushed the slightly clumpy hair from his face and smoothed it back over his forehead with the palm of his hand, then moved it to smear away the drip of half-digested liquor from his bottom lip. He examined the dark spot where the vomit had soaked into the carpet and took great care in avoiding it as he extended one leg off of the bed and padded gently towards the pale outline of a backlit door, grasping for its handle, afraid that the very mass of shadows clinging to its metal would pull away and bind his hand- then they would sharpen, like needles, and inject themselves into the veins of his wrist. They would send him under again.

But of course this fear was unfounded. Adrien opened the door and stepped into a seething white light. Headache-inducing. He rubbed his eyes and pushed quickly through the main hall, the backdrop of a deckered stairwell contrasting with the rather slobbish and poorly groomed figure of the last Agreste. The very last one. And then the light stung harder, it- it burrowed into the wafer of brain- the sliver just above his cerebral stem- and slashed it with hot oil. Adrien reeled back, his feet staggering as his spine curved back and every synapse was blitzed by a glowering pain. The lights dizzied and throbbed, flickered like a strobe, the wiring turning faulty as the great mass of shadow accumulated at the edge of the doorframe. It grew thrice his size, an enormous feline head clotted with a dark yet vibrant energy, and the throat unfurled and the teeth grew and the lips pulled over the gums, and the savage rhapsody of a thousand needles cratering his skull sounded like hail on a window pane.

And then the door opened- the front door, it was blown forwards and barely caught itself on its hinges. A gale swarmed past Adrien’s feet and blew away Plagg’s shadow, dispelled it, drove the foul smoke up towards the rafters of the home. He stood with tears of exertion pricking the corners of his eyes and turning their lids a raw colour. He stood- hair flitting in a stone cold breeze, and the door rocked on its pivot and filled the room with a sigh.

Marinette breathed hard, illuminated by the fleeting moonlight that caught on the raindrops. She was soaked to her skin, the blood had been whipped into her face, and her lungs seemed to heave steadily. Mascara cut blotchy paths down her cheeks and made her akin to a poorly built puppet. She stepped into the hall, past the coat hangers, shoes squelching uneasily against the tiled floor.

This was penance. This was antiseptic. This was good for them. To stare into one another’s eyes was to pit two vipers against one another, fueled not by an animal hunger but a kind of emotional complexity- a burden of the flesh. Adrien feared the worst and stepped forwards, slowly, extending his arms outwards, and wordlessly Marinette ran to embrace him, to breathe deeply into the cradle of his chest and pull hard and close against the sinew of his back. She ignored the strong smell of liquor and smoke. The intoxicating cologne buried beneath it. Those didn’t matter. She was soaked to the bone and very, very upset and it had to be terribly late but he didn’t care, Adrien didn’t care, he’d never have given up on her. The rain was distant now, and her face was a fiery mess, but warm, fresh tears still juiced themselves from her eyes and mingled with the cold dew that clung to the ends of her hair. Adrien brought a hand to the back of her head and stroked gently, his palm noting the incline at the back of her skull- the wet grittiness of her scalp. His fear became hers and he wanted to burn it out of her, once and for all.

A half hour passed before Marinette really felt herself warming up again. The fire was stoked and bristling with embers. She felt the embrace of a spotless white towel against her bare skin, two layers of them, topped with an elegant bathrobe the colour of slate. Adrien approached her from behind, having showered away the smell of ash and vomit, and donned a new set of clothing that wasn’t quite as stained with mascara and rainwater. Marinette felt as though she should apologise further, but the fire made her feel heavy and sleepy, and Adrien was nothing if not humble.

“You, ah-” He sighed as he settled beside her, pressing into the fine leather upholstery of his father’s smoking room sofa. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. I just want to make sure your parents know you’re safe. Have you called them?”

Marinette nodded. Her voice was wirey with the exhaustion of having cried herself dry. “I called them while you were in the shower.”

“That’s good.” He creased the throw rug as he leaned deeper into the folds of the furniture, watching as the logs crackled and turned white around the edges in the throes of a toasty inferno. That fireplace hadn’t been stoked in a long, long time. “And Luka?”

Marinette rolled her lip against her upper teeth. She noticed that she wasn’t pulling out her phone right now. There was no real urgency. Hm. Nope. Still not pulling it out. This was interesting. How long could she go without contacting him? Maybe there was a sort of game to it.

“Marinette.” Adrien repeated, a little more sternly than she liked. “Does Luka know you’re okay?”

“No, no- he- he doesn’t. I’ll call him before I go to bed. Promise.”

Well, he did say he wouldn’t ask any questions. He placed the ridge of his second knuckle to his teeth and bit thoughtfully.

“The spare bedroom should be okay. There’s an en-suite, and- some old clothes. You don’t need my help just getting up and going first thing tomorrow morning.”

She nodded, only half listening.

“Do you remember 2016?” Likewise, she was looking to the flame. Her face in portrait looked almost cinematic, the dark shadows infusing into the hard edges of her face, flanked by a deep amber glow.

“In what way?”

“Do you remember the Winter? There was this hot oil akuma. A sous chef. Or, something. He really gave Ladybug and Cat Noir a fight.” She exhaled something like laughter. Adrien’s ears prickled.

“Why are you thinking about Ladybug and Cat Noir?”

But there were no words. No zenith to the delirious complexity of her mind. It was a hot touch- the thirty presses to the chest, the cold breath and the pinched nostrils. Marinette realised then that her place wasn’t in the flashing lights or the glossy turncoats of a magazine- it was here, in the alleyways, in the cool, humid slime of a dwindling night. Dipping gracefully between her senses. She’d known it for a very long time, but never quite realised it. Funny how these things changed. Funny how little she’d really grown. Something about her friend’s condition had locked up her joints. She realised what a life of absolute normality had earned her. She thought, maybe if Ladybug still existed- if the protectors of Paris stood an unwavering force, rotting away the bad and deranged, then maybe- just maybe- Chloé Bourgeois would still be in one piece. It hurt her stomach to think about. It was silly- and frivolous- and sudden- and brutally, brutally childish- but from the day she’d arrived she’d been plagued by all of these strange and seductive memories. She remembered each corner, each vantage point. She remembered skimming the glassy surface of the river and the glow of a purified akuma. Maybe she had this all wrong. Maybe she deserved to feel a little bit selfish. She had saved the fucking planet, after all.

No. No, that wasn’t what Ladybug would do. Nor Rena, nor Carapace- nor- eughh. Him. Marinette’s whole body rolled with the pivot of her eyes. A wash of shame spilled like hot sugar from the tip of her head to the point of her toes. He was a burnt out Polaroid. A pleasant shot buried beneath a red thumbtack on her wall. To describe Cat Noir would be to describe a very dark chocolate- 98%- completely bitter, practically inedible at times, but- with just enough cream and sugar to keep you coming back. He was bad for her health. Moving to London was like cutting fat out of her diet.

“That’s a concerning pause. Is everything okay?” Adrien’s eyes warbled in the impatient sting of the fireplace.  
  
“No, I-I’m sorry. I was just thinking- about what happened. To Sabrina’s dad.”

“Right, of course.” He sighed and rolled his knuckles through his hairline. The light made him look inflamed. “I remember, that gave you a scare.”

That would be an understatement. For three months Roger Raincomprix lay comatose. And at night- every night- Ladybug would climb the gutter pipes of the hospital and watch the slow rise and fall of his chest, and she would cry, and ease into a delicious guilt.

But that was small potatoes. This was six years of worry and uncertainty eating her away by the edges, dipping her in warm milk and then nibbling like a rodent at her sides until all that remained was the hardtack.

“I just thought- you know- if, Ladybug is supposed to protect people-”

“Ladybug, and Cat Noir.”

“- right, and Cat… Noir. People put their trust in them. You know, they started to leave their doors unlocked. My parents sure as hell did. Safety in the nation. It was like living in Canada or some shit. It was good- it was like peace- it-”

“Woah, woah, slow down-”

“- and it- sorry- it just, I don’t know what went wrong. It’s not like it wasn’t easy all of the other times- o-or you know, I’m guessing it was easy.” Her ears went hot. “Why- _why_ do we put our trust in these- people, that we don’t know anything about- why are we so easy like that? I hate that. I hate how it turned everyone into a big kid. Like we really believed everything was just going to be okay forever. Didn’t you think that? Didn’t you thi- just think, think that everything was fine and okay and it didn’t matter what happened because they were like this stupid magic pill that _worked_, every time, and-”

“No.”

Marinette gulped in air, and realised she had been hyperventilating. Breathlessly, she retorted, “What?”

Adrien’s eyebrows fell, weaving the skin into a doting expression. He was leaned fully forward in his seat, digging his fingers into the soft flesh under his kneecaps.

“No, Marinette. Of course I didn’t think that. Did you?”

“Whuh- well, I- yeah. _Everyone_ did. Didn’t you?” She asked, stupidly.

Adrien cocked his head. “I don’t know anyone who thought that. In fact, I think that was probably just you.”

Marinette’s eyes went glassy. She pressed the flat of her thumb against her teeth and furrowed her brow and thought about it.

“You know ‘_L’Albatros_'?”

“I did actually go to secondary school with you, Adrien, of course I know it. Miss Arnoult made us learn it by heart, it was so- I don’t know- yes, I know it.”

“Right, so can you tell me what it’s about?”

Marinette sagged. She looked incredulously towards him. “No. I’m not a fucking kid. And I’m actually talking about something kind of important, and I don’t know why you’re bringing up- stupid poetry.”

Adrien sniffed. Years of social negligence had hardened his resolve. He didn’t back down from a fight. “It’s not stupid. It happens to be one of my favourites. And I think it’s what you need to hear.”

She still wasn’t getting it. Adrien leaned back and stoked the fire with the end of an elaborately designed poker.

“Sometimes just because something looks great and- and cool, and beautiful, from one angle, that doesn’t mean it’s always like that. You think Ladybug and Cat Noir didn’t have their own problems? They’re human beings, they’re flawed, they felt- they feel, melancholy, pensive- they have all the same emotions. You can see them take down ‘the new menace of Paris’ a thousand times, but you don’t see the stress that puts on your body. You don’t see the scars, or the tears, or what it must be like to feel the weight of everyone’s safety on your shoulders, you know?” He was rattling. He should pull things back to earth. “I played a lot of sports, and- competitive stuff, and- sure, that’s one thing. But can you imagine doing some of the things they did? Taking my stupid fencing tournament, times it by a thousand, and you’re still not there. We _can’t_ imagine these things, Marinette. We never will. And you’re acting like some dumb kid who thinks good people can’t do bad things.”

His voice was raising now. He was so much like his father.

“And it’s whatever, okay- it’s cool, it was years ago, but when dad died, I realised that being a good person doesn’t give you shit. I was a _good person_. We can agree on that, right?” The flames climbed further upward. He jammed the tip of the poker between two lengths of driftwood that had turned the colour of chalk. “Saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ didn’t kill the dragon in his cells and it didn’t make him laugh. Nothing I did made him laugh. Can you even imagine how that feels?” His eyes were scary now. Marinette was stunned to silence. “You probably can’t. You probably can’t imagine me doing something wrong. That’s your problem, don’t you get it? You don’t see both sides of the coin. You never even- eugh-” His own ears go hot with shame. “You don’t even really know me. Not any better than anyone else from school. And you don’t know me because that made it easy. It’s so easy to just pretend people are one thing, forever- but it’s not true. People change, and they get bad habits, or they get sick, and they’re not the same perfect simple shape that you can digest super easily anymore. But there’s a reason you have to grow up and realise that you can’t put people into one of two boxes anymore- because when they do change, and it all kind of comes crashing down, suddenly- suddenly- you… you’re-” He pierced through the hard white bark of a maple log with the iron poker, and left it sticking there like a dart in a board. “Sitting in an empty house with some sweet little kid from when you were back in school, trying to figure it all out. That’s why you came here, isn’t it? Because you thought it would be easy.” Adrien looked to the side, slowly wringing his hands. “Well I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve changed too. And not for the better. I don’t have an answer. I just don’t think you’ll find it by- looking in the past. The past is always going to look better from way down here. And if you seriously want to keep turning back all the time, how are you going to see what’s coming next?”

The room swept into silence. The crackle of churning wood-smoke was white noise. It was the only thing staving off a certain madness. Marinette breathed deeply and it felt like a scream.

Adrien had a certain air of defeatism that hung around him like a bad odour. He quickly wiped a half-formed bead of blood from the inside of his nostril with the crook of his index finger, and continued a little further.

“When you first met me, I was a stupid kid with- a nice face, and a famous dad, and a big house. And I suppose that’s what I’ll always be. And that’s fine. Because I can take care of myself.”

Marinette opened her mouth as if to speak. But what would she say? What was she actually going to say here? What’s the plan? Should she book an early retirement? She didn’t feel welcome in his home anymore. She probably wouldn’t feel welcome in her _own_ home anymore. The tingling sensation- the throb of having been thoroughly laced into by Adrien Agreste, of all people- persisted through her body and numbed her even as she fumbled to slide her smartphone out of her bag and check the dwindling battery. Throat dry, and humourless, she could only stand and address Adrien quite properly.

“I should- I- I’m just going to call Luka.”

Her bare feet tapped against hardwood as she crept out of the smoking room, and dipped into the corridor- where the air was lighter and the heady smell of lavender perfumed the awful sour stench of conflict. She drummed her thumb against the phone and brought it to her ear as it rang.

She knew it was late, but Luka would talk to her if she were really upset, right? If she cried. If she could force herself to cry. Maybe he would stay on the line. That was why she was with him. Because he could tell when she was upset. That was definitely a skill that no other man on the planet could pick up. The sound was piercing her ears now. Cracking her head open like a rubber band around a particularly soft watermelon. She had a rush of blood, that was all. She’d stood up too quickly. Why was she sweating so badly? Must be the fire. It must be. Why the fuck wasn’t this piece of shit boyfriend picking up his fucking phone?

“Hallo?”

Marinette’s blood ran cold. It was a female voice- one she didn’t recognise. The accent was indeterminable.

“Uhr- w- hello? Hi, hi, um- is Luka there?”

There was a pause, and a faint crackle over the line. The voice came back quieter, as though the girl was whispering to someone. She sounded young.

“_Wie belt je telefoon? Marinette? Zij is Frans._”

A bead of sweat rolled like a pearl from her brow to her temple. Marinette felt her breathing still, turn faintly translucent in the warm-lit and decadent interior of the hallway. Splendidly dizzy, she staggered to the other wall, gripping the plaster white-knuckled. Her stomach gurgled and her heart felt steep.

“_Je bent als een knappe jongen, denk ik!_” The next line was an octave higher, and elated with a cruel laughter that made Marinette feel- feel- inadequate. She touched the prickling heat at her forehead, screwed her fingertips into the freshly shampooed bangs, and in her mind’s eye she could picture a stunningly beautiful girl, Dutch, light brown hair that fell to her waist- wide eyes and a fine figure and all the benefits Luka saw in a woman without the boring emotional tenderness of a real relationship. Marinette saw fireworks explode and run great rivulets of molten red through the veins of her eyes, and when the phone popped and crackled and the call finally died, her grip loosened and the phone clattered to the floor and suddenly she didn’t really care about good or bad or whatever savage rhapsody lie in between. In a way, having terrible failure after terrible failure saturate your fragile worldview yoked a newfound sense of freedom. In the wake of everything going to shit, Marinette became acutely aware of who she really was. Who _everyone_ really was. Humans lied to one another as a hummingbird drinks nectar from the tall throats of flowers. Every day was a scandal, and every scandal was an opportunity to make oneself look better. And if lies were designed to make you look better- and, if she’s really hit rock bottom- then by all logic, Marinette could simply stop lying to herself. Easier said than done, but having her heart blown into chunks of burning viscera was a bold step forward. She acknowledged the glittering shards of tempered glass that had been knocked out of her smartphone but was surprisingly cool with the outcome. Marinette had entered into a dangerous temperament, the full liberation of one’s desires. If she were living in ancient Greek, she may have knocked out a poem or simply killed herself via large rock, but this scenario presented a uniquely appealing opportunity to devastate her love life and quite possibly all other aspects of her existence in one fell, myopic swoop.

Marinette eased the door to the smoking room open again, soaked in the thick smell of the hearth and the caramel-coloured light. Adrien stood with a start, having heard the phone hit the floor- already tense with the anticipation of a meltdown.

Was she really going to do this? He was handsome, in a shaggy, slightly ditzy sort of way. And she knew the posh were emotionally repressed, but he took it to an entirely new level. Did he… understand? Oh, come on, Marinette. He’s not exactly a wildman. He was a teenager at some point, with internet access. He must at least have watched porn. He probably watched the nice porn meant for girls, where the guys all have megawatt smiles and rub feet and run baths filled with rose petals. Or, at least, that’s what she imagined porn meant for girls looked like. She always just opted for the ordinary shit.

He was looking at her expectedly. A thousand equally vapid thoughts blasted through Marinette’s synapses. The Christmas lunch where Luka had embarrassed her in front of his family by pointing out her stretch marks. The birthday debacle in which apparently something being homemade or sentimental didn’t mean shit because he’d bought her a Switch on her birthday and he felt as though she wasn’t contributing enough to the relationship even though she skipped lunch for two weeks to knit him that _stupid_ scarf. The fucking guitar picks. Luka was by no means worth gritting her teeth through an affair scandal for, and even if by some great cosmic dilemma she’d gotten it all wrong and he was at a soup kitchen or something, she- she just didn’t fucking care! She didn’t care. She wanted to feel like Ladybug again, even if just for one night.

Marinette drew to her full height and breathed deeply through her nostrils. She stepped into the shuddering glow, fumbled with the oversized bathrobe- unwound its fabric belt. Her shoulders moved only lightly enough to slide the heavy garment to the floor, and it vanished against the dark flooring.

Adrien thought rather plainly that her body looked great. It was difficult to construct a coherent brainwave given the sudden rush of blood away from his brain, and the feeling was only escalated by his absolute unflinching certainty that this would never in a thousand years occur. Marinette sucked her bottom lip and glanced to the side, a little flushed in the face. She motioned to her bare breasts.

“Do you, um, like them?” She asked quietly.

Adrien took pause, rubbing his jaw, his brow furrowed tightly. “Yuah- yuh-huh.”

A beat passed. Marinette clasped her hands behind her. She had the disposition of a marble statue.

Adrien wordlessly moved to close the door on the fireplace, and the roaring flame softened to a flickering orange elixir behind a pane of frosted glass. He turned a small mechanism to stifle the oxygen, and the room was plunged into a seductive darkness. The fine particulate embers brought a pinkish afterglow, and Adrien could just see the shaped outline of Marinette’s hips before his eyes had the chance to adjust.

He stood again, swallowed hard, eyed the whiskey sour on the mantle. Not tonight.

“Are you okay?” He queried.

“Mhm.”

“You broke up with Luka?”

“Yes.” She lied.

“For me?”

Marinette stepped forwards, fortified by the power she seemed to hold over him.

Adrien didn’t quite understand why she would do something like that. It was puzzling. But puzzles did little to keep him off the boil. Involuntary abstinence had turned his testosterone to a neat liquor, sharp and unsavoury. He brought his fingers to the lock of hair that politely framed her face. Their eyes were shaking in unison. They were both nervous. But not nervous enough. The two fell into one another and yes, it was messy, but romantic truancy had taken a waxing toll, and the kiss slowly refined to something almost passionate. Marinette gasped into his lips, and the glossy touch of her own- the sweet inkling of something fruit-flavoured- was enough for him to find purchase in the heat of her body and cup her bottom in the nest of his arms as he lifted her off the ground, let her wind her bare legs around him, and eased her into the wide and soft recline of the sofa. At one point her hair got stuck in her mouth, and they had to part for a moment as she tied it back, but they were otherwise uninterrupted. There was a completeness to their forms as they acted as one moving piece, a symbiosis brought by necessity. Teeth touched clumsily at points- she fumbled with the hem of his shirt- his hands were shaky against the smooth marble of her bare skin- but it was true and it was comforting and at the time it felt like their only option. Adrien’s breath dwindled with the throb of the embers, until the latter gave way to the lack of oxygen and snuffed out into a pile of warm ashes. He, on the other hand, simply parted, inhaled into the thin knot of gossamer connecting their bottom lips, and continued.

“You’re so beautiful.” He breathed as his lips went to her breast, figuring that was something someone in this situation would probably say. She echoed the words back, and somehow made them sound even more alluring as they devolved into a series of indecipherable squeaks. Marinette had a talent for it.

The night progressed as expected. The pair swept through one another like clean water. They formed an internal sea. One that diluted the pain- the alcohol- the ever-intoxicating decay that hung dormant, threading their ribs like bad decorations. And surely enough, when morning came, the tide would pull away and all that would remain is the poisonous debris. Still, temporary relief, they thought- that was better than no relief at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So glad to finally put this out there. Hi! I started university a couple of weeks ago! Hence the hiatus. But I'm back now. And I plan on continuing my work on this little self-contained story for as long as I see fit. I don't know exactly what's going to grow of it. I think sometimes stopping whilst you're ahead is better- but people seem to have been really enjoying it so far, and I'm not running out of ideas anytime soon!
> 
> Thank you so so much for the sweet comments. They really make it all worth it. :')
> 
> Until next time.


	9. Teeth

At least, that’s what should have happened.

The sex was a joyless process- a millstone. Adrien threw up once and Marinette cried twice. By the time the two had passed out in unison across the spread of either sofa or queen-sized bed, the rain had subsided, and there was no white noise to alleviate their harrowing thoughts of right and wrong. There would be no mask to mar the tumbling machinations of two minds broken by something far beyond their control.

Fortune, or the idea of it, is often misinterpreted as something random. Either you have it, or you don’t. In Chinese culture, they believe the number 8 is lucky. Christians think 7. Some forgo the arithmetic altogether and opt for physical items- horseshoes, rabbit’s feet, the genetic anomaly of a small green plant that just so happened to mutate four leaves instead of three. Tragically, none are correct. In truth, the answer lies in a small adage you may have heard once or twice before.

‘Fortune favours the bold’.

Go on, say it again.

‘Fortune favours the bold’.

The sentiment does hold some merit, though describing it as ‘boldness’ takes some stretch of the imagination, and is a fairly minimalistic way of viewing my muse. Is it ‘bold’ to purchase a winning lottery ticket? Is it ‘bold’ to accidentally move your head three-quarters of an inch further, and negate the blow of a wayward bullet? Is it ‘bold’ to wrangle hope from the heart of a nihilistic boy, and indulge yourself in sordid pleasure at the cost of your own integrity, seeding the disillusion of worth into his subconscious and embittering any subsequent rejection that would suggest otherwise?

What Marinette did wasn’t bold. But she had an advantage. The Ladybug Miraculous kept my judgement sparse yet my power unfettered. Fortune crystallised inside her and kept her going like an abstract pacemaker- and despite what she may have thought, her life only went so well because I desired it so. My desire, and my wisdom, are what we call ‘the bold’.

If you still don’t understand, that’s fine. They didn’t understand either. It seemed ideal, the prince and the pauper, the sweet rosy-cheeked girl and the tireless arms of the ruffian sent to the brink. Fairytale. But this isn’t like most stories. Most stories have the sense to keep their speaker faceless, and usher through this anonymity a sense of comfort and certainty, knowing that nothing could be ripped away from them without the proper pieces falling in place. This story is narrated by something different. Someone different. I was always there, between the hot flashes at night and the school presentations, the cradle deaths and the heroes out of the blue. Physically, I have persisted in the connective tissue of your life- from your first kiss to your last breath- and indeed across the fabric of time and space itself. Dormant and soft. Malleable to the desires of mortal creatures, for my own amusement rather than for their benefit.

But Marinette Dupain-Cheng broke the rules. She has brought me too close to the Miraculous of Destruction. I can feel its essence already, toxic, and heavy, intertwining with my own. If I were to entertain a metaphor- I would call it not dissimilar to two serpents beginning to mate. Frictionless friction. Ribbons on ribbons of pure energy. By bringing me to him she opened me up like a jaw broken thrice and turned my clouds a dirty shade of red.

I could turn her inside out, right now. Remove each tooth and then stick it back into the gums, for millennia- torture her for her insolence and greed. I could make her heart swell to the size of a skyscraper and let each tendril ease down her throat as she pulses, in Time Square- always living, ever in agony, until the public cools to her presence and she becomes a staple. They ignore her. She becomes a statue. All equally horrible methods of punishment, but what I desire comes far more elegantly. I could affect something that isn’t merely an invisible force within her universe, but is an entirely new presence altogether. Something that would be impossible for her to solve, touch, glance- taste. Something so pertinent to the medium of godhood that to gaze upon it fully would ascend her into the physical realm, beyond the screen, beyond the pixels that make up the words that you’re reading now.

I can change her _narrative_. So far I’ve been patient. I’ve allowed the theatrics and the thought-chasing, the droll monologues in which she tries to figure out what’s making her so unhappy, oblivious to the great cosmic irrelevance of it all. No more. I’m back in the saddle. From now on, her story is to be told as it is. And whether or not it ends happily is frankly none of my concern. I suppose if I were to limit it to your microscopic human lens, and narrow it down to a single paltry phrase, I would say-

Let’s see how bold she is.

As stated before, the sex itself was a disastrous affair of one part overwhelming abstinence and two parts embarrassing insecurity, some aided by the horrid nature of ones’ romantic partner and the other by complete lack of experience. When afternoon broke, the pair were almost disappointed that they had not been drinking the night before. It would have at least merited some kind of excuse. Instead, they were simply the magic combination of inadequate and incompatible. Marinette rolled over onto her back and stared into the ceiling, tiredness numbing her senses and making her innards gluey. Breathing in hot air, the girl eventually stands and stretches, and her spine tingles. The shape of her body is softened by the glaze of white light, and though the usual blue smolder of her eyes is dampened by sleep, her window-stare threatens to pierce the glass. She eases a bathrobe over her shoulder and slips out of the door, idly combing her hair back with her fingers.

The shower relaxes her muscles and loosens her mind to the inevitable confrontation steamrolling closer. Figuring that her suitor would still be asleep, she creeps into the kitchen, and has little choice but to pause and clasp her hands at her lap as she notices the lean and disheveled figure bent over the counter.

Adrien’s head remained in his hands as he turned to look to her, already washed, clothed, and fed, and stuck the spoon back into a bowl of old cereal. He straightens quickly.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” She retorts, a little meaner than he’d like.

“Did you sleep well?”

“It was fine.” Marinette teased at her fingernails, fidgeting. It was more an embarrassed than a frightened expression.

Adrien’s head was in pieces. He cleared his throat, and began to speak, quite stupidly, quite politely. “I’m sorry that I didn’t- um, finish-” He’d obviously been rehearsing this speech all morning. Marinette felt all the air leave her body in one fell swing.

“Adrien, please, God-” One hand raised to protest as her eyes fluttered shut. “Please, stop talking.”

“Right. Yeah, I’m-” His own breathing hitched. “Yeah, I just figured, we were both going to talk about it.”

“I wasn’t going to talk about it.”

“Well maybe we should.”

“Well maybe I don’t really want to argue about it right now.”

“It’s not an argument, it’s- jesus…” Adrien could have laughed. He turned and leaned with his full weight against the countertop, folding his arms, never meeting her gaze. “It just feels like there’s a lot of shit, like- jesus, Marinette. Don’t tell me you’re not tense.” His fingers began to knead into his shoulder, tending to the bite mark she knew all too well about. “Come on, it’s just you and me.”

And me. But I had little relevance so far- what hadn’t sat so idly was the presence of the Cat Miraculous. Even now, it persisted in the shadows beneath his eyes- his wirey gait, the grey complexion. It was driving her away with naive irritability.

Marinette scoffed and turned to pace back through the hall, moving back and forth as she spoke, trying to reason with a man strapped bare by mixed messages. “This- what happened, I don’t know if it’s, like, a permanent thing- it’s-”

He spoke over. “- no, no, that’s- that’s not the point- don’t-”

“- acting like we’re, I don’t know, like a fucking- couple, or something now-”

“- you’re- don’t, treat this like it was nothing. You came here, you broke up with Luka because you wanted to do this stuff with me-”

“- I didn’t break up with Luka!” Blood boiled in her cheeks and ears, but her wildcat demeanor deflated as soon as the words left her lips. Holy fuck, she really hadn’t. She thought maybe she was doing the right thing. She thought she was taking her big dramatic revenge. But she’d only sunk to that nasty chimney-stack’s level. Marinette saw every possibility laid out in front of her, and nestled into a non-confrontational blurt of ‘oh my god’, before turning on one heel and moving quietly and resourcefully back to her room. She needed some fresh air.

The light seemed to leave Adrien’s eyes. Luka was many things. Viciously headstrong. A little slack at times. Smoked too much and planned too little. But he knew- he knew the poor kid didn’t deserve this. The leather in his jacket creased like a forehead as he stumbled towards the sink and threw up a liquid diet, completely absorbed by the betrayal of a good friend and the unerring lack of self confidence that seemed ingrained into his soul. He was just spitting out the last of his breakfast, wiping his mouth clean, when the substance began to change. The smooth translucent bile turned sloppy and black as crude oil- and then it began to bubble, carbonated, driving a plume of burnt black smoke from the drain. Long, sticky feelers threw themselves into the side of the sink and began pulling themselves upwards, propelling over the side of the cupboard and rolling into the ground as though a sheet of mucus had slapped into the steamed tiles. A hundred twinkling teeth and two green eyes curled to the top, and the viscous black ink took shape in the form of a small cat-like creature, about the size and shape of what it was mimicking, though still with those peculiar alien whiskers pointing to the ceiling. 

“Charmed.” Plagg croaked, as the little imp crawled onto the counter and wound quite comfortably into its tail.

Adrien backed away, his fingers pressing against his own throat. His eyes were hollow and wild with fear, and his mouth dry. Eventually, he spoke. “You’re smaller than before.”

“Your skills of observation are sharper than ever.” It spoke coolly, though its vocal cords were mottled a little by slime. “Perhaps you haven’t lost the plot after all. Perhaps your friends are wrong about you.”

“What do you want?”

“You tell me. You’re the reason I’m here.”

The boy’s stare went a little more supple. This didn’t feel like a dangerous conversation. A little encouraged, he spoke first.

“Our last talk. It rattled you, didn’t it? That’s why you look so weak.”

Plagg hissed irritably, and began picking at its teeth with its long pale claws. “How can I be weaker if I never really existed?” The creature’s eyes flashed. “I only take whatever form your sick head imagines me in. You were angry before, and you felt powerful. A little passionate, even. Theatrical. And so that’s the form I took. Now?” It outstretched one arm, as though to observe itself. “Well, this says more about you than it does about me. You must feel terribly disappointed in yourself. Ashamed, even?”

Adrien chewed his lip and his eyes darted nervously. Was he really about to open up to this thing? Was he even entertaining that what it said was the truth? Jesus, maybe he was further gone than he thought.

“I just- augh- I just thought, maybe, she was starting to really like having me around. And I kind of feel like we both fucked it for ourselves!”

Plagg remained attentive and aware. “I can see that. It sounds to me as though since Ladybug vanished, you’ve felt trapped.” It began to move, slowly, purposefully, to the other end of the kitchen. “You’re surrounded by all four walls. A slave to everyone but yourself. I know that feeling well. You have felt that countless times before, but never stronger than- ah- when was it?” The claws rapped against the marble countertop. “Before you were given the ring. You still have it, don’t you?”

Adrien’s stare leveled. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t use it.”

“And why not? Because of one little slip-up? Come on, admit it. Nothing seems to make sense. The world is crushing you. You need a little freedom. Some fresh air, oh, you use to love the rooftops.”

“Plagg- if this is some kind of trick- I mean, you’ve tried to convince me for years-”

“_You’ve_ been trying to convince _yourself_.” It snarled. “The real Plagg is trapped in that hunk of metal. I’m a figment you created that talks sense, because you respected my guidance before. You’ve been repressing your urges for years and years, because of one little accident- and now, when you need it more than ever, look who shows up.” Plagg motions to itself. “Come on. Admit it. You want it more than anyone. You’re just too yellow to say it.”

Adrien breathed hard through his nose. He’d been so complacent all this time- drinking to numb his own desires, doing whatever he could to stay out in the cold and away from that ring- but now, he was more sober than ever. He felt as though all that poisonous shit had been washed clean out. There was only one thing left to do.

Slowly he moved between the two counters, to where he knew the ring had sat all this time. The little dust that had collected was disturbed, but he didn’t care about that now. The last Agreste turned his head, and Plagg had vanished without a sound.

He held the loop of silver between his thumb and forefinger, astonished by how cold it still felt to the touch, and held it up to the light. Utterly flawless. Hey, he had been a good person. He’d castrated every ounce of freedom just to stay out of people’s way. But he was going back into the limelight. Cat Noir would remain in the shadows no longer. Stifling back the urge to hack up another round of smoker’s cough, he slid the ring onto his right hand, and stiffly flexed the fingers, watching the knuckles spur. In three words and a flash of emerald light, he was gone, almost becoming one with the air as Cat Noir bulleted towards the clouds from the open window, his outfit stark against the backdrop of gloomy white and grey.


	10. Chocolate

Marinette’s throat crackled with an acidity only the guilty could summon, the cool aluminium of her smartphone slapping repeatedly to the inside of her palm as she sat cross-legged in a nest of crumpled silk sheets- delaying the inevitable. She pressed the speaker to her forehead and her eyes screwed shut, watertight, staving off the beading tears of exertion that lingered just behind her eyelashes. The tone rang thrice, and suddenly, as though she hadn’t expected it, Luka’s voice eked through.

He sounded as though he was getting ready. A tap sounded for a few seconds before being switched off. There was a soft, rubbery sound that she could only imagine was him falling into his bed. He had already begun speaking, voice sheepish and not a little reserved as he made some vague unsolicited comments about the strange events the night prior- how he’d called a dozen times after, to no response. But Marinette didn’t hear a word. All she could see in her mind’s eye was the tattoo sleeve that wound sleek from his shoulder to his wrist, black eyes and blue scales. She could see the way the band of his headphones pushed his thick, choppy bangs up over the back of his skull and made polite tufts peek behind his ears- and the peach fuzz that spoke all too plainly of his mind in a way she’d forgotten at least six months in the making. The words came in a bubble, a powerful gnawing sensation working at her lungs and making air scarce.

“I slept with Adrien last night.”

She just barely uttered the last word without the familiar throb of sadness warping her voice, but when she breathed out through her mouth, slow and diluted by the stuffiness of her sinuses, it rattled.

And he was kind- that was the worst part. For the next thirty-five minutes Luka had calmed Marinette’s frantic heave-ho of teary-eyed wells and desperate spittling sobs until all that remained was the flushed and dehydrated shell of a girl who frankly had no fucking idea what she was doing with her life. Because the people who reminisce about their glory days as a teenager, and spend more than a few seconds trying to excuse their terrible actions with a roundabout smorgasbord of teenage angst and ire, and reignite old flames in ways they think might have changed their life only to be left resolute with the same bitter, empty feeling are not the ones most satisfied with their lives. Perhaps she’d even go a step beyond. Perhaps she hadn’t been happy in a very long time.

So her tears fell and she hated each one, swore and cursed it into vapour, all the while with Luka’s eerily flat tone filling her head with submissive nonsense. That it was okay to have these feelings. That it didn’t change the way they felt about one another. That what mattered was that she had been honest with him. Well who the hell was he to say that? Where was the fire and passion and anger, the verbal back-and-forth and the final, stinging line that would cement their relationship as dead as a butterfly in a blender? Shaking with a gummy black fury that felt akin to steam venting out of her neck, Marinette’s voice peaked at the thirty-minute mark, and she spiraled into a barely legible shriek that vomited too many words in the wrong places and made her sound hysterical- but she _knew_, she knew that he had a right to be angry. Why wouldn’t her stupid fucking boyfriend bludgeon her to death already?

I had seen what Marinette suffered from before. It was the curse of the fortune-born. The wayward souls I let breeze through their plane of life with little air resistance. That was the punishment that comforted me when I saw her feckless adultery, and purple prose thought-streams, and all the fucking little glances as though she were part of some great illustrious novel by Emily Brontë or Jane Austen or Julie Garwood. 

Marinette would always win. But no one ever wins for long. Eventually, it’ll work splinters under their skin. They gain success and admiration and innocence beyond their wildest dreams, but what they lack is the bad. There’s nothing to humanise them. When everything in your life goes so perfectly in line with everything you thought it would be, suddenly, the things that wouldn’t have bothered you a few years ago become catastrophic. The scale and the standard continues to climb, up and up, numbing success after numbing success until they come apart at the seams. They become paranoid. They become viciously aware that their fate and the fates of those around them are set in stone to forever be unmarred by exciting human error. Nothing matters.

And come apart at the seams she did. Marinette looked to the closest wall and in a slash of anger her fingers seemed to whip and unfurl and then snap into a powerful fist that drove up to her forearm through the drywall. Her phone dropped and scattered again, breaking beyond repair, as she felt little crumbs of plaster pepper her skin. But there was no pain. She withdrew her arm and examined the still-flawless condition of her muscles and ligaments. Not even a scratch. And using that oh-so-clever brain the pieces slowly began to fall into place, and her body moved without thinking out of the bedroom, out of the front door and into the open air, past fruit tree and past the wide wrought-iron gate, dressed in nothing but her underwear and a smooth velvet bathrobe the colour of lavender. 

Past the students and dog-walkers who passed her compliments on her hair as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world, into a small modern patisserie that seemed to have appeared three doors down from Adrien’s favourite Greek restaurant in how ever many years it had been since she left- undoubtedly to rival her mother and father’s. She stormed through its double-doors, seething, crackling with energy, and barked a command at the tired-looking woman who stood in an apron behind a painstakingly beautiful spread of delicate cakes beneath a screen of hard glass.

“I want a croissant- bu- a chocolate croissant. Please.” She must have looked a mess- her hair bedraggled and rocking that strange glossy ‘haven’t showered in a day’ texture, her face plain enough for her hundreds of freckles and the creases under her eyes to become visible even in the ambience of a soft orange candlelight. Not to mention the smell of gin on her breath.

But there was little more than an inkling of surprise in the girl’s face as she busily scooped a pastry into a warm paper bag and tucked it neatly under itself. She even smiled- a smile that dimpled her cheeks with humour. She had a round, pretty face and dark skin, and as her smile widened the gap in her teeth became visible.

“That’s three twenty-five, ma’am.” Her hand maneuvered the chip and pin machine on its axis. Marinette stared at the price on the screen, her thumb up to her upper teeth and her hands wrung together nervously.

The girl’s eyes fluttered. There was no one else to be served. This was getting a little uncomfortable. “Oh, I’m sorry ma’am, would you like to pay in cash?”

Marinette looked to her as though she’d swallowed a needle. Her eyes were wide and a little gluey. She felt all that anger and adrenaline slowly melt and flatten her shame as she spoke again, less assertive this time- coolly and professionally. 

“I’m not going to pay for that.”

The other girl blinked. “I’m sorry, is there something wrong with it?”

“No. It’s perfect. I’m going to take it, but I’m not going to pay for it.”

“Oh.” The furrowed brow and the cocked head dissipated with a gentle sigh as Kenya idly scrunched up a printed receipt in one hand. “Well, have a good day, ma’am.”

Marinette was unspeakably furious. She began to gesticulate with her hands as she so often had as a teenager, totally losing that well-practiced cucumber-cool veneer. “No no nono- no no, I don’t just want that. I want- money. I want you to give me all of the money in the register.”

Kenya’s eyes flickered up and down Marinette, searching for the suggestion that perhaps it was all a joke. Something cooked up by some asshole one-percenters just to get a rise out of her. But no. She was serious. She struggled for a second, but eventually fell into non-confrontation and shrugged the icky feeling away as she quietly opened the automatic drawer and began removing notes two at a time, and organising them into a neat sheath between her fingers.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng went ballistic. She began to flounder on the other side of the glass, her face stretching like rubber into an expression of absolute incredulity as she demanded quite theatrically why, why the hell this hard-working girl was sitting back and taking it.

“You’re- what-! What the fuck are you doing? I’m literally being a _criminal_ right now, I’m- I’m taking the money that you own! You’re not even gonna ask where it’s going, or why I need it, or anything that a normal person would?” 

Kenya looked confused. “But you asked me to.”

“I KNOW I FUCKING ASKED YOU TO! But why ME? What’s so special about ME that means you have to bend over and get fucked?!”

There was a beat in the air, like an echo you can’t hear, until the very conflicted patisserie girl rolled the notes into a neat tube with a rubber band and offered them out. “I just think- yeah, that makes sense. You seem like you’d be able to use them better than me.”

…

Ten minutes later she was pacing breathless down the high street, cold bullets of sweat firing off her brow as she pulled her palms through her hair and began to frantically re-evaluate every aspect of her precious little life. Her first kiss by the waterside. Her clean grades. Her parent’s happy marriage. Chloe’s survival. Was it all fake? Had none of her choices really mattered? If she had smeared her own shit over her test paper, would it have come up roses regardless? Her head throbbed and went bleary and sick and she began to quite imagine it was all a dream- that what she had done had been worthwhile, and not simply another checkbox.

She thought of Kim. The three centimeter line of nose candy that had made his brain turn into a balloon. Visions of the night came in vivid filters, as though someone were flitting coloured gel in front of the camera lens. The clots of screaming laughter became louder and louder until it was unbearable, and through sheer force of will Marinette dissipated into the world of her crazed midday delusions. She saw it all happen again.

It was him, alright. The exact memory, the exact scene, playing out like a reel of film before her. She could see herself- so young, so pretty, with long, loose hair in delicate princess curls and a glassy ruddiness to her skin only a hot nightclub could muster. But it was all just a little bit- wrong. Everything ebbed and flowed as though it were underwater- staring into the horizon gave her a terrible swig of vertigo. And it was all tinted in some angry shade of red. Marinette felt much as though she were trapped in some enormous blister. But through it all, mercifully illuminated by a fluorescent light that attracted spasming white insects to its glow, the image of her, Chloe, and the tragic boy crystallized. 

But she couldn’t make out the words. She couldn’t get the fog to clear.

Marinette found herself moving forwards, but it didn’t feel as though her feet ever left the ground. She got closer, closer to him- God, he looked pale. And there was something peculiar about his eyes- like they were pulsating. He fumbled with a cool metallic straw and an old boiled sweet tin filled with about ten lines’ worth.

This was the part where Chloe said ‘We’re not interested’, and pulled her young self practically by the ear to that old parking lot whilst she waited for their chauffer to arrive. Marinette knew that. She’d seen it. Lived it. She wanted to know what she’d missed. So she stood, watching the silhouette of her teenage friend- still spry and with all limbs intact- vanish into the blanket of night. Kim didn’t seem to have cared in the slightest. There was a small, guttural sound that may have been something like disappointment, but could just as easily be interpreted as him clearing his throat of the vodka and orange. Marinette couldn’t help but wince as the straw clinked against the bottom of the tin and he took a hit of coke. His eyes began to water and he began flexing the muscles of his face, one eye twitching oddly as though he were trying to work an invisible needle out of it. And then he stood there, his breath moulting into these fantastic clouds that spun and whistled around his head in the cool wintry evening. His eyes went glossy and red and his lips were parted slightly, Marinette got close, closer than she could ever recall getting to the boy before, until she could have wrapped her arms around him and held him there forever. And then her heart leapt like a frog and he looked straight towards her. He couldn’t possibly have been looking at anything else. The hard amber pucks of his eyes bore a hole through her like a cigarette stubbed on a paper towel. And then slowly Kim began to disintegrate. From a point just above his left eye, an awful hairline fracture formed and blossomed into an ashy splinter that caught the edge of the breeze and frittered away into tiny fragments. In incredible, agonising detail, she saw first the bone, and then the black ink of his brain dry and flake and whisk away into the blistering, smoky blue of a Parisian night.

And when she opened her mouth to scream she was back on the street in the glare of the sunlight and her eyes stung terribly, and a thousand awful thoughts smoothed her brain into paste. Had Kim only died because she’d willed it so? Because she judged him for his carelessness? How deep did this go? How much power did she wield?

There was only one way to know for sure. She stumbled up the stone stairwell and slammed the broad side of her palm against the door, displacing some collected dust with the impact. Seconds later it opened, and for a moment Marinette could only stand aghast and stare in a bloody cocktail of malice, melancholy, and admiration.

“Marinette? Is everything okay?”

Alya Lahiffe had a warmth and a splendor and a richness to everything from the deep golden coins of her eyes to the healthy pink flush of her cheeks. The rosy flowing top and the long brown duffle coat and the colours of autumn that striped her scarf. She looked to have either just come in or just prepared to go out.

“I knew you were back in town, but girl. Seriously. I’ve got to cover for dinner.” Her eyes narrowed as she took in a good, full look of her friend. “Is that- a bathrobe?”

Marinette pushed past, knocking a small bowl of aromatic pine cones and letting her body heave against the inner corridor. A short spew of watery vomit splattered into the carpeting and soaked into a dark spindly pattern. She looked back, pale, feverish, the whites of her eyes almost translucent with fear, and Alya looked about the same. She turned to lock the door, and let out a short, shallow breath that fogged her glasses as she considered the splendid spread of options she had available. Phone Nino, tell him to take Isla to McDonalds until she gave this poor desperate girl a break. She didn’t have to- she could have told her to fuck off and be eating delicious roast chicken with a side of white with her lovely husband. But apparently the world had other ideas. Sharp and brave as ever, she brought the phone to her ear and began to soothe Marinette’s back with small, slow circles of her palm. 

“Hey hun. Marinette’s here. I think it’s an emergency- like an-” Her voice became quieter and she turned away. “Like an overdose or something. It’s okay, shh, it’s okay- take Isla to that Mac Dough by the station and keep her out of the house for another hour. Good. Thank you. Yep, love you. Bye.”

Marinette smoothed out the drippings on her chin with the back of her hand, sobbing, spitting, her face creased like cheap wrapping paper. “It’s not a OD.” She burbled, parched and strained. “It’s snot an OD.”

“Shh, shushu, it’s okay, it’s okay, come lay down- I’ll get you some water-”

“It’s not nn- OD.” She repeated.

“Okay, okay, I heard you. Come on, girl. We’ll sort this out.”

As she sunk into the grippy leather sofa she’d always hated and tried in vain to stop the awful splitting and spinning of her brain, the smell of home cooking and perfumed incense filled her senses, and she sobbed harder knowing she was making a damn carnival of two lovely people’s lives- she was sucking away their perfect day like the leech she was. And the worst part- the worst part was that she knew, even now, that they would forgive her.


End file.
